Drafted Page 5

  "The war is going to start here?" I asked.

  Dad walked faster. We emerged from the cluster of trees. "The battle needs to start where there is still our form of life," he said. "Tess, I won't tell you more. You will not be taking part in this. You're leaving today."

  "I am?" I asked. "So you're going to fight?" I clenched my fists. My parents were casting me aside as if I had no stake in this. I'd lost my home to the Grounders before, just like they had. I had a reason to fight. What was the point of being an Earther if I couldn't do that?

  "Yes," My father said. "Your mother and I will be here to help the colonists when they arrive."

  I felt too angry to speak. Ever since that horrible day when I was eight years old, I had dreamed of doing heroic things to save the planet. Of course, I never expected to take down the Great Council or get elected as Great President, but the dreams hadn't died. Now they were screaming at me, urging me to stay and help the colonists fight the Grounders.

  But I was getting sent away.

  "Where am I going, then?" I asked, following Dad up our hill and into our house.

  Dad gave me a strange look that I couldn't decipher. "Go along," he said to me. "You will be safer where you are going."

  There was a pain in his words. A hard decision. A sense of dread exploded in my gut. "Go--"

  Dad closed the door behind me.

  I held back a scream.

  Standing in our living room were five Task Force members, all wearing bluish-gray uniforms with those high collars. I knew that under those collars, those disgusting blob things, those Grounders, were controlling brains. Two women and three men stared at me with those blank expressions. The two men had Matt handcuffed and standing calmly in between them. From his expression, I would have guessed that it didn't matter to him if he got deported. Why wasn't he freaking out? He had killed some Grounders.

  "Tess," one of the women said in her flat monotone. "You have disobeyed your summons. We are here to inform you that you are being deported to Mars, effective immediately."

  Chapter Five

  Dad stood next to me, emotionless. I wondered if one of the Grounders had latched onto him, but the back of his neck remained clear.

  He marched me here, knowing that the Task Force was waiting.

  My father wanted to ship me to Mars. To where people were green. To where at least some of them were planning to invade.

  "It's okay, Tess," Dad said. "You will be safe in the colonies." He spoke in a cautious manner, warning me not to say anything. The war was still a secret from the Grounders, then. It had to stay that way. "I'm sure your mother and I will join you when the draft chooses us. It shouldn't be too long."

  The woman nodded. "That is correct."

  My parents were shipping me off the planet to get me away from the coming war. What had happened between Matt and my mother?

  Mom appeared and stood in the doorway to the kitchen. She made no motion to walk over and reassure me. She was hard and unforgiving. It was her silent signal that I was to do the same.

  "Remember who you are, Tess," her mother said. "You are an Earther, and you always will be."

  I wanted to ask if Mom and Dad were only sending me to Mars to keep the Task Force from destroying us. Maybe they were cooperating so they'd get to stay behind and help with Matt's plan. I was hoping for the second possibility.

  Either way, betrayal burned. I held back tears.

  “How can I be an Earther on Mars?” I asked, facing her. She was going against our philosophy. We had to do everything we could to defend Earth. It was part of my identity.

  The Grounders had ripped away my home before. Now they were going to rip my identity away, too.

  Mom blinked at me a few times. Matt refused to meet my gaze. He must have told my parents something that convinced them to send me away with our enemy--an enemy that snatched bodies. But I was only going to get deported. Right? The Grounders took over people in power.

  "Try," Dad said. "It will be hard, but don't forget. And don't let anything that they tell you convince you otherwise."

  I thought of running across the park. I could still reach the door. But what would these Grounders do to my parents? They must have an alien way of thinking. Maybe compassion didn't compute. Anything willing to take over the body of another living creature couldn't have a lot of it.

  But maybe there was a way that I could help Matt...

  And possibly, Winnie and the others.

  “I'll remember this,” I said to my parents.

  A flash of hurt came over Mom's features. Her eyes begged me to understand.

  And Dad wouldn't face me.

  “Tess,” the Grounder woman said. Her name tag told me that she was called Patsy--or had been. With that blank Grounder expression, she nodded to the door. “You will be boarding the five-thirty flight. You may meet your friends at your destination.”

  And so, without another glance at my parents, I turned and stormed out the door.

  * * * * *

  The next minutes passed in a blur. I didn't know what Matt had told my parents, but I was going to ask him in the least kind manner that I could as soon as I got the chance.

  That looked like it was going to be after we boarded the ship and were off the planet.

  The Task Force walked us right through the Woking Market area and past all the food stalls. I couldn't bear to look at them. I passed Toni, who manned the stall for bacon and eggs. He had a line at his place, and he waved at me, but then his face fell when he saw who was escorting me. We might never see each other again.

  I either would never come back home, or I would return to a war zone. I wasn't sure what was worse.

  Matt said nothing through the entire walk back to the transport belt. We all boarded. The tension between us grew and grew. I wondered what the Grounders had planned for Matt.

  There was no point searching for an escape. My parents had just betrayed me. They were the people who were supposed to help keep me away from the Task Force and Mars. They had fled with me before. Why not again?

  My stomach twisted into a knot just thinking about it. It was a worse nightmare than I ever imagined.

  Matt and I stepped off the belt together once we got to the museum, which was a little busier now that work and school were out. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to demand to know everything from Matt. The suspense was killing me.

  He could tell that I was both terrified and furious. Matt glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and shook his head the tiniest bit. Did he think that I was stupid? I knew that we couldn't talk while surrounded by Grounders.

  "Through the Mars Exhibit, please," the blond woman ordered in monotone.

  Matt and I obeyed. I had gone into autopilot. The Grounders did not speak while we walked through the exhibit, which was empty. It was as if people sensed that something wasn't right here.

  "We do not have time for the intro film," a man said. "You must board soon."

  "Intro film?" I managed. It was the first thing I said since walking out of my house for what was probably the last time.

  I wondered what Mom and Dad were thinking right now.

  They had vowed that we were all going to stay together on that fateful day. I remembered it as well as I remembered those machines that razed our houses and our farms.

  Now they had broken that promise for someone they didn't even know.

  The Grounders took us through the little theater, which remained off, and then back through the hallway. I came close to vomiting at that point. While the corridor had been cleaned up and the smell of sanitizer hung in the air, I saw Winnie's form lying there every time I blinked. Maybe I deserved this betrayal. Karma might exist.

  But I hated Matt with every ounce of my being. I was going to make his flight to Mars as miserable as I could.

  The Grounders led us back through the hallway and into the spaceport, which was dead. It wasn't a place that people hung around. The main room's departure times sign was short. Shi
ps rarely launched during the night.

  We crossed the main room and past the sign. There were three more departure times for the entire day, and we were the last one. Only a few other Grounders, dressed in their gray-blue uniforms and their high collars, stood around the perimeter of the main room as if they were making sure that we couldn't run. I walked faster. They stared at Matt and me with blank expressions. It was as if there was no one inside these people.

  These aliens had taken away who they once were. The Grounders seemed to have multiple ways of doing that. I wondered what it felt like to have one of those blobs dig its tentacles into your brain.

  And then to have it take over your mind--

  Did these people still exist at all, or was it like nothingness when the Grounders took you over? Was it like becoming a passenger in your own body? I thought of the Great Council and of the people who struggled to get elected.

  The losers in those elections were lucky, and they might not even know how much.

  Compared to the Grounders, Matt had it good. He had only turned green.

  They led us into another terminal, one that had a couple of dusty miners waiting to board. Neither one of them acknowledged that we were there. Both of the men stared at the floor. They both looked old enough to have families. I wondered if they had to leave any children behind. Maybe they were good fathers who hadn't sold out their children. Maybe they offered to go in exchange for their kids.

  I wanted to be alone.

  The Grounders seemed to know what I was thinking. They led Matt and me past the seats, the food stalls, the posters, and towards the steel doors that marked the entrance to the ship. They opened automatically, revealing a narrow corridor that would make anyone feel claustrophobic. The Grounders stood aside to let us enter. We did. It wasn't like we had a choice. I knew that, logically, there was no getting past the entire staff of the spaceport.

  The entrance to the ship was a tiny hatch in yellow metal that forced me to crawl.

  I felt like I was climbing into an execution chamber.

  And the worst thing was, you couldn't tell that it was a ship. The designers had made it so that the hallways were carpeted and painted in white as if this were a cruise over an ocean. Lights hung over each of the doors, giving off a soft yellow glow. It was silent in here, even though there were a dozen doors. This one was a late ship for stragglers like me.

  The blond woman was happy to speak--if Grounders had emotions. She poked her head through the hatch while Matt and I straightened up. "You may have your pick with the quarters," she said. "Takeoff will be in twenty minutes. There is a lounge down the corridor to the left if you are hungry. Have a lovely flight."

  She moved aside to let the miners crawl into the ship.

  Only then did I realize that Matt was standing next to me, so close that his arm was almost touching mine. I waited until the two dusty workers filed down the corridor to find rooms.

  "Thank you," I said, "for ruining my life."

  Matt looked at me with wide eyes. "I didn't ruin your life," he said in defense. "The Grounders did. They wreck things for everyone."

  I seized his arm and squeezed. I was shocked they hadn't killed him. Even though I was a girl, I was stronger than him, thanks to working out and spending time in full gravity. I dragged him down the corridor and towards the lobby. It wasn't a big room, but there was a snack bar full of synthetic food and several chairs. I spotted no tablets or holo screens. This flight was going to be a boring three weeks.

  Matt didn't dare say that my grasp was painful. Guy pride. It almost made me admire him a bit.

  "What did you tell my parents while I was gone?" I asked.

  Matt dared to face me. I let go of him, which I probably shouldn't have done. I felt like a bully, and everyone knew that no one liked bullies. But these were extreme circumstances.

  "I told them about our plan," Matt said. "You see, the Grounders watch every ship that leaves Earth and comes back. They can shoot down any unfamiliar one. We're building ships on the colonies that can get through the Grounders' defense systems. The new ships don't have engines, so the Grounders can't detect them. But they need to be programmed to land in a precise spot. That's why I left the tracking capsule with your parents. They're going to plant it in Woking Park, which will be a good place to start the invasion. The first ship will land there."

  "The invasion's starting at my house?" I exploded.

  "I thought you were an Earther," Matt said. "I thought you'd be on board for this." He backed away.

  "In case you didn't notice, my mother made me leave the room because I'm not important enough to know anything."

  "Wow. Your parents didn't tell you anything," Matt said. He shook his head. "The Earthers were formed to oppose the Grounders. Don't tell me that you didn't know that."

  "They...what?" Mom and Dad had told me that the party was formed to protect the environment and take it back. My grandfather had been one of the three founding members.

  Matt sighed and shook his head. "Then your parents didn't tell you the truth. Some Earther parents don't like to bring their children into it until they're of age."

  "My parents said that our job was to help the planet," I said.

  "And it is," Matt said. "Anyway, the Earthers have been waiting for a chance to strike back against the Grounders. We knew you'd help."

  "So my parents knew there was a war coming?" I asked.

  "Well, sort of. I gave your mother the capsule to plant in the park. It was the barrel of the gun. It'll guide the first cylinder to where it needs to go."

  "Cylinder?" I asked.

  Matt nodded. He wasn't smiling. "I'm sorry you got caught up in this."

  "I'm sorry, too." I wasn't sure where to direct my anger: at Matt for all of this, or my parents for not telling me the truth behind the Earther Party. "You could have killed more Grounders in the terminal when you still had the gun," I said. "You could have stopped this, and you didn't."

  "I could have," Matt said, "but I didn't. I've done my job."

  "You let the Grounders take Winnie," I said. Rage rose up again. "You could have held them off while we got my friends out of there."

  "You're going to be better off on Mars," he said. "There's going to be a lot of fighting when the ships land. Besides, it's not what you think. The gun I had--"

  "So you did tell my parents to send me away. It looks like Mars benefited you," I said. I knew it was a low blow, but I had a point, and I knew. "Why didn't the Grounders try to kill you after you took out five of them?"

  "Grounders don't have emotions. Revenge isn't a concept that they know. As long as I'm away from them, that's all they care about."

  "You're right. The Grounders are stupid," I said.

  "Are you saying I should have gotten killed?" Matt asked.

  This fight was close to blowing up in a nuclear blast. "No," I said. "I'm just saying these Grounders...do you know what? Never mind. Don't talk to me for a while. I'm going to lie down." I stormed around Matt and away from the snack bar.

  I went to the final door in the narrow corridor. I found a small room with a cot and flopped down as the captain announced over the intercom that this was my last ten minutes on Earth.

  Chapter Six

  "Tess. Get up."

  Dad spoke in a tense whisper. I opened my eyes to find my drawings on the walls. Colorful flowers and butterflies smiled, filled in with neat crayon. The clock on my wall read 3:30 A.M.

  "Huh?" I asked. My body sunk into my bed. I eyed my embroidered pillow, the one with the leaf pattern. I wanted to go back to sleep.

  Dad was a shape in the darkness of my bedroom. "Tess. We have to go. The Great Council is here."

  I didn't know what he meant. It must be something from the news. Those hooded people who met in that giant room and talked about laws, maybe.

  A light swept across the house, illuminating my room. Dad wrapped his arms around me and lifted, as if impatient that I wasn't moving fast enough.


  A low growl followed from outside. I woke all the way up and wrapped my arms around Dad's neck. There was something big and terrifying in our yard.

  I screamed.

  "Tess. Be quiet," Dad said. "The Great Council is tearing down Rockville."

  "What?" I asked.

  He carried me out into the living room, to where Mom waited with a duffel bag. It was clear: we were leaving. The loud crash came again.

  "I can't go out in pajamas!" I shouted. I thought of my pictures and my leaf collection back in my room, pressed into my book. I couldn't leave that. I also had Nanna, my stuffed lion, on my bed. My heart ached for her.

  "You have to," Dad said. He put me down on the floor, and I stood. I was getting too big to carry. More lights danced outside. A loud crash followed that made me want to cover my ears. It sounded like it was coming from the neighbor's house, where Tad lived. I thought of the jungle gym that his dad had built last summer for us to play on.

  Was something tearing that down?

  Mom remained calm. She always did. "Out," she ordered.

  The three of us ran through the dark living room and out into the night. It was cold. Clear. Mars hung overhead, red and angry.

  I had to hold back a scream.

  Giant machines, taller than our houses, rolled through Rockville and through the rows of houses that surrounded the town square. Huge wheels towered. Spotlights shone everywhere. The world was all roaring and crashing as the bulldozers plowed through homes. Screams pierced the air. People ran. Rooftops toppled. A dog barked in panic. Parents held onto children's' hands.

  Massive tire tracks had made indents in our yard. Tad's house had turned into a pile of splinters and rubble. The jungle gym lay in pieces. The yellow roof had dirty marks over it. One of the giant bulldozers had mashed it into the ground. It had turned our favorite place into a dump.

  My heart constricted.

  "What are they doing?" I asked. My chin wobbled. I faced a bulldozer rolling over the fields. Barns had flattened. Crops lay smashed. Terrified cows and sheep darted out of the way, but one of them had fallen victim to the giant wheels. I looked away from the blood.