Variant

The clouds had broken around the moon, and there were fewer trees blocking the light up here. I could see a vague mass of forest-rolling hills stretching out toward the west. It felt strange to have a new vantage point after spending so long in one place.

“Look,” Becky said, her outstretched arm pointing toward something in the distance that I couldn’t see. “Is that smoke?”

I squinted. That was the general direction of the camp, but I couldn’t see in this light.

Mason reached us.

And suddenly Becky collapsed, violently crashing onto the fallen log. She screamed in pain but it abruptly changed into a groan.

I took a step toward her. She must have tripped. She must have-

Mason was standing above her, and he turned to face me. He was holding the wrench.

He had hit her.

No. He couldn’t be one of them. All the androids had given themselves away back with Ms. Vaughn. I stared at him, too stunned to speak. His eyes were dead.

I raised my hands, but it was too late to block him. He brought the club down onto my wrist brace and I crumpled to my knees. I tried to turn away, but he struck me in the ribs before I could.

He was still, looking down at me. He was going to kill us both. I glanced at Becky. She was struggling to move and softly gasping for air.

“Mason,” I said, tasting blood in my mouth. “You’re… like them?”

His lips didn’t move, and it wasn’t his voice. “Please return to the school.”

He’d been taken over. Whatever I knew of Mason was gone, just like Jane. Someone else was controlling him now.

“Who are you?” I yelled. He’d raised the wrench again. “Come on, Mason. Don’t do this. You have to be in there somewhere.”

His body tensed, and then he swung.

But before it reached me I heard a pop and a buzz, and something shot toward Mason. He froze and then fell forward, as stiff and dead as if he’d been made of stone.

I looked at Becky. Her side was covered in blood, her face even paler than usual. She was holding a Taser.

She forced out the words. “I stole it off Ms. Vaughn.”

I was too much in shock to answer. Becky was bleeding. I was wracked with pain. Mason was dead-short-circuited, maybe. My own roommate…

Becky had begun tugging at her sleeve, and I watched numbly. She had a cut on her head where Mason had hit her, and her upper arm was drenched in blood, which looked black in the darkness. I stared as she struggled to take off the jacket. It was cumbersome. She was only using one arm.

I shook my head to clear it, pushing myself off the ground and toward her. Gingerly, I helped guide the jacket sleeve off.

“I landed on the log,” she said through gritted teeth, and nodded toward a mass of sharp, broken branches protruding from the trunk of the tree. One of them had pierced her bicep like a spear.

She leaned back, wincing at the pain, and I tried to clear the shredded strands of cloth from the wound. The cut wasn’t wide, but it was deep. I could see the whiteness of her bone.

Yanking a wad of loose material from her jacket, I balled it up and then pushed it onto her arm. She pressed her lips tight together, trying to hide a groan.

“Hold that,” I said. As she did, I pulled off my belt and cinched it around the makeshift bandage.

My hands were wet with her blood as I knelt beside her.

“We have to keep going,” she said weakly.

“I know.”

She leaned forward, trying to will herself to stand. She was tougher than I realized.

I stood shakily, reached for her good hand, and helped her to her feet.

Looking into her eyes, I smiled. Tears were forming but I blinked them away.

“What?” she said, cocking her head and grinning weakly.

“You’re real,” I said. “I saw the bone.” Before she could respond, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest. She hugged me back with her good arm, the other hanging limp at her side.

“We have to run,” she said, not letting go.

“I know.”

Looking beyond her, I watched the forest below us. Nothing was moving. That wouldn’t last long. Once they knew that Mason had failed, there’d be someone else after us.

I put my hand on the back of her head, holding her against me, and I bent my face down into her brown hair. I couldn’t help but cry.

“I wanted you to be real.”

I felt her breathing, rapid and unsteady, as her arm tightened around me.

We had nothing. No supplies. We’d both taken off our packs to work on the fence. Becky was bleeding, and my ribs were as bad as they ever were.

But we were free. They were going to chase us, but right now we were free.

“We’ll move downhill,” I said, my eyes locked on the smoky hills to the west. I was already picking out the trail in my mind.

Becky turned her head so she could see the forest floor but didn’t let go of me.

“That’s what they say,” I said, remembering something I’d seen on TV. “Downhill until you find a stream, follow that to a river, follow that to people.”

I felt her nod, and then she craned her neck to face me. She cracked a weak half smile. “Try to keep up.”

I took a deep breath. “Let’s run.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

Snow had finally come.