“You’ve proven that you’re okay with killing people that get in your way. I’m something that is in your way now. I’ve shown that, because I can’t trust you, I want you dead. I can’t imagine us continuing this mission together. I’d be afraid that you would kill me if I ever became an inconvenience to you.”

  Stridor stared at Asa. His lowered his right hand a bit so that it was lying on Asa’s gasoline soaked hair. He kept his thumb on top of the lighter. “You’re right and you’re wrong,” Stridor said. “You’re right that I would kill you if you became inconvenient to me. You’re wrong in assuming that you could be inconvenient.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Stridor said. “What you need to realize is that, first off, I want to complete this mission and that, secondly, I don’t think that I can do this mission alone. Recall what I did when the King Wolves were attacking you. I came back for you. On paper, you were inconvenient then. You cost me a good deal of bullets and saving you put my life in danger. But if you put into perspective the fact that I think that I need you to do this, it was worth it. I need you for this mission, Asa, and so you’re not inconvenient to me.”

  “What about after Robert King is dead, though? What then?”

  “Then you’ll be valuable to me because arriving at the Academy without you will be risky. I think that we could go back to the Academy and continue on with our education next year if there isn’t an investigation; I think that in that case no one will notice our absence. But you’re famous there, Palmer. Robert King knows that Multipliers want you. If you went missing, he would want to know why. So I have an incentive to return to the Academy with you.”

  Asa considered this. He kept his finger over the trigger of the gun. What Stridor is saying makes sense. I believe that he actually does have incentives to not kill me. What worries me is that he’s saying these things with a gun to his chest. He’s so smart; he could be tricking me.

  “Tell me what you would like to happen, Stridor,” Asa said.

  Stridor looked at Asa with unflinching, icy eyes. “You hand me the gun and I’ll walk over to my pack and take out one of the water bottles. I would toss it to you, you’d clean yourself off, and then we would hop on the four wheelers and head to Chignik. That is, if they have enough gas to get there.” He smiled again. The right side of his lip was swelling where Asa hit him. Asa felt the left side of his cheek swelling.

  “I think that you would shoot me,” Asa said.

  Stridor nodded slightly. “I understand.”

  “I’m not buying this incentive-talk. I think that your incentive will be to kill the thing that you perceive as a threat, which is me.”

  “That’s not true, Asa, but I understand your position.”

  “Do you really want to continue on with me? You don’t want to kill me?”

  “I don’t want to kill you.”

  Now Asa was smiling. “There’s only one way that I’m willing to do that. You’re not going to like it, but if you’re being honest about all this incentive-talk, you’ll do it.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “If either of us really has an incentive not to kill the other person, it’s me,” Asa began. “I need you to get to Noah—he wouldn’t meet me without you. Without meeting Noah, I won’t be able to find Robert King. I also need you to get back to the Academy. I don’t know how to work your tablet to confuse the guards. I also can’t fly back, and I think that it would be difficult for me to mend my wing without your help.”

  Stridor’s eyes flickered up, as though he were thinking for a moment. They then fell and met Asa’s.

  “Do you agree that my incentives are more dire?”

  Stridor didn’t answer.

  “If I die, your chances of killing Robert King and returning to the Academy diminish. If you die, my chances don’t just diminish, they go to zero. I have no chance of killing Robert King without Noah. I have no chance of returning to the Academy without your help.”

  “I can see that,” Stridor said.

  “And you agree that neither of us has a moral aversion to killing the other?”

  “Certainly.”

  “One of us has to have power in this situation,” Asa said. “I think that the safest way to determine who gets the power is to give it to the person who has the biggest incentive not to abuse it. That’s me. So here is the deal. You are going to release your grip on the firearm, slowly. Then, raise your left hand into the air. The next thing that you are going to do is back away ten paces. Then you throw the lighter so that it lands safely at my feet. The next thing that you do is go get a water bottle and throw it towards me so that I can clean off the gasoline. Then we leave, and we don’t kill the guy.”

  Stridor regarded Asa for a moment. His face became a blank mask and Asa couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His cheek twitched. Finally, he smiled. Asa hadn’t noticed it before, but the teeth on the left side of Stridor’s mouth were covered in blood. His long, slender fingers released the grip on the gun. Then, just as Asa had asked, Stridor backed up, threw the lighter at Asa, and then threw him a bottle of water. Asa unscrewed the cap and upended it over his head. The liquid was cold and he poured slowly, trying to get as much gasoline off as possible. He wasn’t able to remove all of it, and by the time he was done, his teeth were chattering, but the gasoline smell wasn’t as strong.

  Is Stridor really going to listen to my plan? Asa wondered. Is he really going to be okay with giving me all of the power? That didn’t seem like Stridor; this was the same person that had pointed a gun at Asa and forced him to keep going after he had been attacked by King Wolves. Although if he’s planning something, I don’t see what it is. He’s given me the lighter, he’s allowed me to clean the gas off of myself, and I am the one holding the gun.

  Still, Stridor was too smart and too emotionally cold to be trusted. I’ll have to keep an eye on him. It’s possible that he’s backing down now but waiting for a better chance to kill me. We’ll have to sleep sometime.

  “I think that you’re right,” Stridor said. “You having the power makes the most sense. You couldn’t make it without me, and so I can trust you. If we run into trouble, though, I’m counting on you not to hesitate with the handgun.”

  Asa nodded.

  “The only thing that I have a problem with is not killing the red head. He’s already dead.”

  Asa kept the handgun pointed at Stridor, but he averted his eyes to look at the person that had wrecked his ATV. A puddle of blood was forming around his head. There was a red, circular puncture wound under his chin.

  Stridor pulled on the dead man’s jeans and spoke. “You shot him after I kicked dirt up in the air.”

  “Oh,” Asa said. I thought that that was your blood I saw spray into the air.

  Stridor then pulled on the green John Deere shirt. It was snug on him, and barely came down to the top of his jeans, whereas it had been slightly baggy on the man that was now dead in the clearing with them. For some reason, it made Asa feel uneasy about not knowing the redhead’s name. Stridor then took stock of their supplies. Luckily, both ATVs tanks of gas were three-quarters full and the canister on the back of Asa’s was still half full. Neither Asa nor Stridor knew how far the off-road vehicles could go per gallon, but they agreed to simply ride until they were out of gas. Stridor at first wanted them to siphon the gas from one of the ATVs into a plastic canister and then they could both ride on one of the four wheelers. Logistically, this was a good idea. Asa wasn’t willing to ride that close to Stridor, though. Stridor rolled the dead man’s ATV right-side up and took that one. Asa took the one that belonged to ‘Reggie,’ the corpse’s friend who was now presumably a Multiplier.

  As Asa sat down on the four-wheeler, he looked behind him at all times, making sure that Stridor didn’t try to charge him. The four-wheeler bounced beneath Asa’s weight and he picked his feet up and rested them on the panels. Stridor stared at him, holding onto the handlebars. “Go ahead,” Stridor said.

  “No, you first,” Asa said. He motioned with the gun.

  Stridor’s eyes narrowed.

  “I get the power, remember? I’m the one with no incentive to kill you,” Asa said. “So I want to be behind you.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Stridor said, smiling sarcastically. He still had the blood on his teeth.

  “Not at all,” Asa said without humor.

  Stridor started up the ATV, punched the gas, and passed Asa. Asa clicked the safety on the side of the gun and holstered it in the neck of his suit, so that it was sandwiched in between his suit and his skin. He then turned the key, hit the throttle, and followed Stridor.

  Asa had had a friend growing up that lived on a farm and had ATVs. He hadn’t ridden one, though, in nearly ten years and was surprised at how well the vehicle handled. The suspension made Asa only bounce slightly as he ran over roots and mounds of dirt. The four-wheel drive made it so that they could drive over saturated areas of mud without getting stuck. Asa stayed fifteen feet back from Stridor so Stridor’s tires didn’t sling mud back on him.

  They rode in between the trees for the next ten minutes. While they were in the forest, they didn’t dare go faster than fifteen miles per hour because of a fear that they would lose control and wreck. The motors whined loudly beneath them, and Asa wondered if Multipliers were around to hear.

  Ten minutes into the drive, Stridor led them up a steep embankment that was about twenty feet high. What’s on top—railroad tracks? Asa followed, gripping the rubber on the handlebars hard and leaning forward as the ATV ran up the incline so that he would not roll backwards. Stridor saved me once already when the King Wolves attacked me. I don’t think he would come back for me if I wrecked the ATV now, though. He gripped the seat by squeezing his legs together and pushed the metal throttle. He underestimated the four-wheeler’s speed and flew up the incline too quickly. When he reached the top, the vehicle jumped a couple feet into the air before bouncing and then landing atop a dirt road. A smile broke out onto Asa’s face as he saw that the road stretched out in front of them.

  Stridor never said anything about a road, he thought. He could see Stridor losing him in the moonlight. He was fifty yards away from Asa and gaining distance. I guess he wants to pick up the pace now that we’ve found flat ground. Asa gripped the handlebars, leaned forward, and pushed the throttle down all the way. He felt like he was shot out of a cannon. The ATV lurched forward, large tires kicking up dirt behind him. Wind shot past his face at an incredible speed. The ground zoomed by beneath him. He didn’t have a speedometer, but he estimated that he must be going over fifty miles per hour.

  Is that possible?

  He didn’t know how fast four wheelers could go, but fifty sounded right.

  Each of the ATV’s had a pair of small headlights on the front that shone out in front of them. Asa’s were on, but up on the road, they weren’t necessary. The path was high up, with embankments on either side. The elevation stopped the trees from blocking too much of the moonlight and starlight from reaching the ground, and Asa’s surroundings were lit in silvery light.

  17

  Noah

  The night grew colder and Asa became hungrier. The whine of the ATVs and the air flying past Asa’s face became monotonous. The road never changed. It wasn’t a highway—or at least, Asa didn’t think that it was a highway. All the highways he had ever seen were paved, not dirt roads. Highways also had signage, which this road did not have.

  He also thought, unlike at first, that it couldn’t be someone’s private road. He didn’t have a clock, and he didn’t know how fast they were traveling and so it was impossible to calculate exactly how far they had gone. He watched the gas needle lower down to a quarter of a tank over a course of time that felt between one and two hours. Even though I can’t calculate it, my gut tells me that we’ve gone more than fifty miles. We’ve been going fast for a long time. Could someone’s private road be that long? Asa felt the wind blowing through his hair, which was now completely dry. It had an oily feel from the traces of gasoline still in it and was clumping together. The right side of his lip was swollen from where Stridor had hit him. He could feel a knot forming on the back of his head where he had smacked it against the tree trunk. It hadn’t hurt when the injury occurred, probably as a result of adrenaline, but now it was thumping and swollen, like a tiny heart had formed there. After considering, he supposed that it would be reasonable for this to be someone’s private road. In a normal state, that would be rare, but this was Alaska, the least densely populated of them all. He considered some more. This could also be a back road in some national park. Asa didn’t know if there was a national park in the Southwest region of Alaska, but considered it to be a possibility.

  As he watched the dirt pass beneath him, a strange thought occurred to him. This is the first time I’ve driven since Harold Kensing pulled me over. It’s been about a year since I’ve driven anything.

  He remembered that night, holding the leather steering wheel of his dead mother’s Volvo. I had just thought I was going out on a pleasant drive to clear my head some. Then the cop car had come up behind him and pulled him over. I had thought that that was the worst it could get. Now, he was zooming over Alaska with a murderous companion on ATVs that belonged to a dead man and a man who was no longer a man but was now a monster. Asa had wings, one of which was injured, and his DNA had been thoroughly manipulated. There was a clan of mutated monsters that lived in something called the Hive that wanted him dead. It got much worse.

  He kept driving, following Stridor’s ATV and taking the gentle curves of the road while in a trance. He was deep in thought and his hands worked automatically as he sped over the ground.

  It isn’t all bad, though. He compared his life at the Academy to the life he had had before. Being a mutant is disturbing at times (like when my wings first broke through my skin), but it’s a lot of fun. I can fly now, which I love doing. I also don’t have to steal food from my dead neighbors’ pantries anymore, or eat a diet that mostly consists of things sold at gas stations with long shelf lives. I eat steak, chicken, fresh salads and always have enough food to fill me up. I also now get to receive a great education, whereas before I didn’t know if I would be able to finish high school. The best things of all, though, are the friends that I have. There are likeminded people all around the Academy. I have friends. I’m not lonely anymore.

  He thought of the Academy as Conway described it would be, if Robert King were dead. I would still have all of those good things, but it wouldn’t be as lethal. I could count on my friends being there next semester and would not have to worry about them dying in some messed up competition the Boss invents. Without realizing it, he pushed the gas slightly harder and began to travel faster. He felt a rejuvenated sense of purpose. I have to kill him. I need to kill the Boss.

  One of the reasons that he trusted Stridor was that killing Robert King would help them both out so much. I believe that Stridor wants him dead and I believe that he needs me. He looked at the back of Stridor’s hairless head as he rode up behind him. Why else would he go through all this trouble to lead me out here?

  He was then struck by an idea that made him feel as though someone had just thrown a bucket of ice water on him. He hitched in a breath.

  He could be turning me over to Multipliers. They could have contacted him through the internet. They could have offered him a reward for turning me in.

  Or, maybe this Noah person is a Multiplier but Stridor doesn’t know it. Asa looked around at the Alaskan land that surrounded him. They want to find me so badly—why did I ever agree to leave the safety of the Academy?

  He kept driving, and these thoughts disturbed him. In the end, he had a gut feeling that Noah was a real person who wanted to help them and that Stridor didn’t have a deal with Multipliers. Still the nagging in the back of his mind persisted. It’s hard to imagine some guy just stumbling upon the Academy’s intranet, isn’t it? In the end, he dismissed these fears, not because he didn’t think that they were justified, but because he couldn’t do anything about them. It would be impossible for him to return to the Academy without Stridor, and Stridor wasn’t returning until Robert King was dead.

  Stridor kept his tablet on his lap as he drove and every so often Asa would see it light up as Stridor pressed on it. He assumed that Stridor was checking the GPS or a compass to make sure that they were going the right way. Ten minutes after Asa had resigned himself to shelve his fears and keep going, Stridor’s tablet lit up and he slowed his ATV to a stop. The road was lower here, and they had come out of the forest and onto open plains. To their right, in the South, they could see the moonlight shimmering on the dark ocean.

  Asa stopped beside Stridor. He didn’t point the gun at him, but he took it out of the neck of his suit and held it in his hand. “What’s up?” he asked.

  Stridor was staring at the illuminated screen. “That’s it,” he said. He pointed to a dark spot on the edge of the water; a large hill was behind it, casting the area in shadows.

  “That’s what?” Asa asked.

  “Chignik.”

  Asa’s eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t see a town there, Stridor. You said that this person lived in a town. I don’t see any lights.”

  “I don’t suppose you would expect to, either. In this post Wolf Flu era, there’s probably only about three hundred people living there, and it’s nearly one in the morning. The whole town is asleep.” He looked down at the tablet again, tapping certain spots. “We’ll go a little further and then we need to ditch the ATVs and walk. We don’t want to bring any unwanted attention to ourselves.”

  Stridor locked the tablet, put it in his bag, and they continued on. They rode for a mile or so before driving the ATVs into a creek bed and turning off the ignitions. It was good timing. They would have needed to refuel soon had they not reached their destination. Then, they began to walk towards the dark spot at the bottom of the hill. The water was calm and the skies were partly cloudy. It was hard to believe that just a few hours ago it had been storming so hard.

 

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