I land with a soft thud. It’s dark enough so I can’t see anything at first. I reach out my hands and touch what feels like a round glass surface. Slowly I begin to make out my surroundings.
I’m standing in front of a glass cylinder almost as tall and wide as the railcar, with smooth metal casing on top and bottom. It emits a very faint blue glow. A small figure is lying on the floor inside, with tubes poking out of one of his arms. I know right away that it’s a boy. His hair is short and clean and a mess of soft waves, and he’s dressed in a white jumpsuit that makes him stand out against the darkness.
A loud buzzing in my ears blocks out anything and everything. It’s Eden. It’s Eden. It must be him. I’ve hit the jackpot—I can’t believe my luck. He’s right here, I’ve found him in the middle of nowhere, in all the vastness of the Republic, in a stroke of insane coincidence. I can get him out. We can escape into the Colonies sooner than I ever thought possible. We can escape tonight.
I rush over to the cylinder and pound my fist on the glass, half hoping it shatters even though I can tell that it’s at least a foot thick and almost certainly bulletproof. For an instant I don’t know if he can hear it. But then his eyes open. They dart around in a weird, unfocused way before attempting to settle on me.
It takes me a long moment to process the fact that this boy is not Eden.
The bitter taste of disappointment stings my tongue. He’s so small, so close in age to my brother, that I can’t stop the image of Eden’s face from overwhelming me. Others exist who were also marked with unusual strains of plague? Well, of course there would be. Why would Eden be the only one in the entire country?
The boy and I just face each other for a while. I think he can see me, but he can’t seem to fix his gaze; he keeps squinting in a way that reminds me of Tess’s nearsightedness. Eden. I think back to the way his irises had bled from the plague . . . from the way this boy’s trying to gauge me, I can tell that he’s almost entirely blind. A symptom my brother probably has too.
He suddenly snaps out of his trance and crawls over to me as fast as he can. He presses both his hands against the glass. His eyes are a pale, opaque brown, not the creepy black that Eden’s had been when I last saw him, but the bottom halves of both irises are dark purple with blood. Does that mean this boy—that Eden—is getting better, because the blood is draining away, or worse, because the blood is draining in? Eden’s irises had been completely filled with blood the last time I saw him.
“Who’s there?” he says. The glass muffles his voice. He still can’t focus on me even at this close range.
I snap out of my trance too. “A friend,” I reply hoarsely. “I’m going to get you out.” At that, his eyes pop open—hope instantly blossoms on his small face. My hands run along the glass and search for something, anything, that can open this goddy cylinder. “How do you operate this thing? Is it safe?”
The boy pounds frantically against the glass. He’s terrified. “Help me, please!” he exclaims, his voice trembling. “Get me out—please get me out of here!”
His words break my heart. Is this what Eden’s doing, terrified and blind, waiting in some dark railcar for me to save him? I have to get this boy out. I steady myself against the cylinder. “You have to stay calm, kid. All right? Don’t panic. What’s your name? What city is your family from?”
Tears have started to run down the boy’s face. “My name’s Sam Vatanchi—my family’s in Helena, Montana.” He shakes his head vigorously. “They don’t know where I went. Can you tell them I want to come home? Can you—”
No, I can’t. I’m so goddy helpless. I want to punch straight through the railcar’s metal sides. “I’ll do what I can. How do you open this cylinder?” I ask again. “Is it safe to open?”
The boy points frantically to the cylinder’s other side. I can tell he’s trying hard to contain his fright. “Okay—okay.” He pauses in an attempt to think. “Um, it’s safe. I think. There’s something over there that they type into,” he replies. “I can hear the beeps and then it makes the tube open.”
I rush to where he’s pointing. Is it my imagination, or do I hear the faint sounds of boots pounding against pavement? “It’s some sort of glass screen,” I say. The word LOCKED stretches across it in red type. I turn back to the boy and knock on the glass. His eyes swivel toward the sound. “Is there a password? How do they type it in?”
“I don’t know!” The boy throws his hands up; his words contort with a sob. “Please, just—”
Damn it, he reminds me so much of Eden. His tears are making my own eyes water. “Come on,” I coax, fighting to keep my words strong. Gotta stay in control. “Think. Any other way this thing opens, aside from the keypad?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know!”
I can already imagine what Eden would say, if he was this boy. He’d say something technical, thinking like the little engineer that he is. Something like, “Do you have a sharp edge? Try finding a manual trigger!”
Steel yourself. I pull out the knife that’s always at my belt. I’d seen Eden take gadgets apart before and reconfigure all the inner wires and circuit boards. Maybe I should try the same thing.
I place the blade against the tiny slit running along the keypad’s edge and carefully apply some pressure. When nothing happens, I push harder until the blade bends. Doesn’t help at all. “It’s too tight,” I mutter. If only June were here. She’d probably figure out how this thing works in half a second. The boy and I share a brief moment of silence. His chin drops to his chest and his eyes close; he knows there’s no way to open it.