“Very good.” Roberta gently touches his hand. He takes a long look at her. She is older than him. He knows this, even though he has no idea how old he actually is. She’s pretty, in a motherly sort of way. Blond hair with a hint of brown roots, and just a little makeup. Her eyes seem younger than the rest of her face. But that blouse . . .
olina takes off her earphones. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“Stay here,” orders Chauffeur-Claus, no longer jolly, and he jumps out of the van.
Timothy already has his nose pressed against the window, looking out. “This can’t be good.”
“No,” agrees Miracolina. “It can’t.”
Just off the road in a ditch is another Wood Hollow Harvest Camp van, but this one is overturned, wheels to the sky. There’s no telling how long it has been there.
“He must have blown a tire or something, and skidded off the road,” says Timothy. But none of the tires look blown.
“We should call for help,” says Miracolina—but no one brings a phone to harvest camp, so neither she nor Timothy has one.
Just then there’s a commotion outside. Half a dozen people dressed in black with faces hidden by ski masks come leaping out of the woods from all directions. The chauffeur is hit with a tranq bullet to the neck and goes down like an overstuffed rag doll.
“Lock the door!” shouts Miracolina, and doesn’t wait. She pushes Timothy out of the way to get to the driver’s unlocked door—but she’s not fast enough. Just as she reaches for the lock, the door is pulled open, and the assailant hits the button that pops all the locks. All the van’s doors are pulled open at once by the masked attackers. Clearly these attackers have done this before and have gotten good at it. Timothy screams as hands reach in, pulling him out. He tries to wriggle free, but it’s useless. If his fear is a web, then the spiders have got him.
Two more figures reach for Miracolina, and she drops to the floor, kicking at them.
“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you touch me!”
Her fear, which had been so well under control, explodes from her now, because this violation of her journey is a far greater unknown than harvest camp. She kicks, and bites, and claws in terror and outrage, but it’s no use—because in the end, she hears the telltale pffft of a tranq gun firing. She feels the sharp jab of the tranq bullet as it embeds itself in her arm, and the world goes dark as she spirals helplessly into that timeless place where all sedated souls go.
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“You don’t know me, but you know someone like me. I was diagnosed with liver cancer the same week I got my acceptance letter to Harvard. My parents and I didn’t think it was a problem, but when we talked to our doctor, we found out there was an organ shortage, and livers were in short supply. They told me I’d have to be on a waiting list. Now, three months later, my name still hasn’t come up, and that acceptance letter? Well, I guess my education is going to have to wait.
“And now the same people who lowered the age restriction on unwinding want to have a six-month waiting period once parents sign an unwind order, in case they change their minds. Six months? I won’t be here in six months.”
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Waking up after being tranq’d is not a pleasant experience. With consciousness comes a splitting headache, a terrible taste in one’s mouth, and the disturbing feeling that something has been stolen from you.
Miracolina awakes to the sound of someone crying beside her, begging for mercy. She recognizes the voice as Timothy’s. He’s definitely not the kind of boy built to handle something like this. She can’t see him, though, because her eyes are covered by a thick blindfold.
“It’s all right, Timothy,” she calls to him. “Whatever’s going on, it’s going to be okay.” Hearing her voice makes his pleas and sobs settle into whimpers.
Miracolina shifts to feel the position of her body. She’s sitting upright, and her neck aches from the position in which it had hung while she slept. Her hands are behind her back, tied together. Her legs are tied to the chair she sits in. Not painfully, but tight enough to ensure she won’t break free.
“Okay,” says the voice of a boy in front of them. “You can take off their blindfolds.”
Her blindfold is pulled off, and although the light around her is not bright, it’s still painful to keep her eyes open. She squints, slowly letting her eyes adjust and focus.
They’re in some sort of grand, high-ceilinged ballroom. Crystal chandeliers, artwork on the walls—it looks like the kind of place where French royalty would have entertained high society before getting themselves beheaded. Except that this place is falling apart. There are holes in the ceiling through which pigeons freely fly in and out of the daylight. The paintings are peeling with weather damage, and the rank smell of mildew fills the air. There’s no telling how far they’ve been taken from their destination.
“I’m really sorry we had to do it this way,” the boy sitting in front of them says. He’s not dressed like any sort of royalty. Even moldy royalty. He wears simple jeans and a light blue T-shirt. His hair is pale brown, almost blond, and too long—like he hasn’t had a haircut in recent memory. He seems to be her age, but the tired look around his eyes makes him appear older, like he’s seen many more things than anyone ought to see at their age. He also seems a little bit frail in some indefinable way.
“We couldn’t risk you getting hurt, or figuring out where we were taking you. It was the only way to safely rescue you.”
“Rescue us?” says Miracolina, speaking up for the first time. “Is that what you call this?”
“Well, it might not feel that way at the moment, but yes, that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
And all at once, Miracolina knows who this is. A wave of rage and nausea courses through her. Of all the unfair things to happen to her, why did she have to face this? Why did she have to be captured by him? She feels the kind of anger, the kind of hatred she knows is not good for her soul, especially this close to her tithing—but try as she might, she can’t purge herself of the bitterness.