PART ONE

THE SHARP SCENT OF anaesthetics and bleach filled my nostrils. A blinding white light pierced my vision.

I attempted to sit up, but a sharp stab of pain made me shake and fall back down-onto what? It felt soft and sort of comfortable... a bed? Where was I?

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The persistent noise sounded vaguely familiar. Like a heart monitor at a hospital... where had I heard a heart monitor before? I couldn't remember much. Not even my name. Everything seemed hazy, like a dream.

Then one voice registered in my brain. A boy's. Screaming. "April!"

April? That also sounded familiar... that was my name, wasn't it? April... April... like the month. The month I was assigned my job. Executor. That was my job. I hated it. What else had happened? That one male voice kept repeating in my head: "April! April! April!". Whose was it? Hearing the voice made me feel happy inside, but also scared. The boy's voice was scared, so why shouldn't I be scared, too? He was trustworthy. I knew what to be afraid of. I felt a warm sensation tingle in my neck. There was no one touching me, but I felt it. Fingers lightly grazing my neck and then... and then kissing...

Zenon. That was his name. A name that made me feel brave. Made me keep going.

"We have to get out of here," he had said. He gripped the jail bars of the cell. Cell... then a bunch of memories came flooding back. They hit me with the force of a brick.

Cells.

A boy and a young girl stuck in one.

A woman named Leanne with brown hair. Zenon's mom.

A gun. A prick in my arm. I thought it was a bullet, but it obviously wasn't. I was okay. Alive. Breathing. Right? Everything became a little more vivid. Physically and mentally. I could make out sharp corners in the room I was in, read labels on small little bottles on a cart beside my bed. Look at a tiny tray containing something red... red and silver. Small and pill-shaped. A name came to my mind: COM chip. That was in my arm. They took it out. I looked down at the wolf bite. It was all bandaged up, not even any blood seeping through. It was fixed up, at least a little. When I tried to move my neck, I couldn't. It was numb and stiff. I remembered the bite in my neck-not from a wolf, but a human being. My hands were also covered in bandages.

Everything seemed safe and secure. But there was a dark pit in my stomach. Telling me that I should be scared. Afraid. Angry. Zenon's voice came to me again, his own fear escaping into a scream. He was locked up in a cell. I should be scared. Why wasn't I in a cell now? I looked around the large, pristine room. White. Everything was white and very, very clean. There were a bunch of other beds just like mine in the room, too. Maybe about twenty. Ten on one side, ten on the other side. Only a few were occupied. After examining the people a bit, I realized that they were my friends. Zenon, Len, Erin and Shane. Their own heart monitors showed steady rhythms. They were alive, thankfully. Unmoving, though. I found it odd that Zenon was also in the 'hospital'. I thought that he'd been locked up in a cell.

I wrenched my neck to look further down the room. I winced at the pain, but managed to see a doctor at the end of the hallway. He had a clipboard in his hand, and was walking down the aisle, first heading toward Shane, who was the furthest away from me. He looked around the bed, scanning him, then at a folder stuffed with a few pieces of paper beside him on a bedside table. After scrawling some things down with a pen on his clipboard, he repeated the process but beside Erin's bed. Her folder was thick with paper, probably an inch or two wide. I remembered that Erin had her broken leg, so that would probably cause her to have more files than Shane.

I tried to see if I could see how thick my own folder was, but my head wouldn't turn far enough.

The doctor came toward me after putting Erin's files down. He saw my open eyes and gave me a halfhearted smile but I didn't return it. While he was reaching down to pick up my folder, he said, "Welcome back." The folder came into my line sight. I was surprised at how thick it was. Thicker than Erin's, even. He flipped through the pages, scrawling more words on his clipboard.

"Where...?" My voice sounded inhuman. Talking made my throat feel scratchy and firy.

"You're in the hosptial, April. Don't worry. We've fixed up all we could and you'll be fine," the doctor replied. He put the folder back down on the table.

"Erin... she okay?" I asked with my grainy voice.

"Erin's fine. She'll be able to walk without crutches in a couple days. After a few days of rest after the operation-"

"Few days?"

"Yes. She has been here for... mmm... five days."

"What about me?"

"Same amount," the doctor replied. "The wounds on your neck and arm were the worst. Two full days to heal the neck and another four to even fully seal the arm wound. We had to use skin-cell producing agents to fix it."

"Oh." I let my head rest back on the pillow, so I was looking at the ceiling again. The lights were bright and painful. "Is everyone else okay?"

The doctor had to pause a moment. "Yeah... yeah. Your friend Alena, however, may have to go under brain surgery. She's the first brain-damaged refugee we've rescued before, and they don't know what to do with her. What use is a damaged person to the government? Well, if the surgery is successful, we'll have removed any contaminated brain cells, making her pure and useful. Nothing to worry about, really."

"Can't you just leave her the way she is?"

"Well, if we do that she'll have to be returned to New York."

"She can stay here, can't she?"

"No, not exactly. If you're really that concerned, I suggest you speak with Prestident Leanne Adair. I'm afraid I can't do much about it."

Just when the doctor was about to turn away, an ear-piercing scream shook the hospital. I couldn't tell where it had come from. Maybe my left side. That's where the rest of the people were.

Zenon lie down, not asleep anymore though. Sweat dripped from his forehead and his eyes wide open in fear. His hands shook as he wiped sweat from his eyes. That's when I realized it wasn't sweat. They were tears.

"Zenon Adair, what's the matter?" the doctor said. He rushed over to him, handing him a glass of water he grabbed from his table. Zenon pushed it away with his shaky hand and shook his head.

"Please," he said. "Leave me be for a moment." The doctor nodded and moved on to Len, who was rolling around. She sat upright with a yawn.

"Where am I?"

"Hospital, Alena," the doctor replied.

"My name is Len."

"Whatever suits you. I have your name written down as Alena Jane by the government."

"Whatever." The doctor pushed through Len's files. Not just one folder, but two. One had a label on it: Operation.

After finishing with Len, the doctor walked to the middle of the aisle so all of us could see him. Shane and Erin were up now, but because of Zenon's scream, I didn't think anyone could possibly still be sleeping.

"Alright, let's start from the beginning. I just want to say that you're all going to be fine. We've taken out any remaining COM chips from New York and deactivated them, so there's no possibility of tracking you."

"Couldn't you just deactivate it without cutting out flesh open?" Len asked.

"Well, no. If we had the city in range, we could access their COM chip program and deactivate them from there, but it's much easier to take them out and use a high-powered magnet to destroy the inner workings. Make sense?" The doctor waited for Len's nod before continuing. "Now, Len, there's something you need to know." That's when he explained her possible brain surgery.

"No! What... why do you have my brain scans? Where'd they come from, anyway? What if they're not real?"

"I assure you, they are valid. They've been collected from over the years. From the First Year all the way to Fourteenth Year. You see, school isn't merely for education. We need to find out whose brains were left undamaged and assign them to Executor, where they can help patrol the damaged ones. Intelligence doesn't matter! It's just that whenever someone is undamaged, they're more likely to become intelligent because they're better at focusing and better at keeping things inside their head. Better memory."

"But... but I don't want to get some stupid surgery. I want to stay exactly the way I am!" Len said.

"If that's what you want, the government will return you to New York City," the doctor said.

"Then they'll just kill me."

"That's your choice to make. You can either stay here and get the surgery, or you can return to New York."

Len was silent. I couldn't believe she was actually pondering both sides. Although, I supposed I couldn't blame her. I wouldn't want to have surgery to change who I was.

"Guys," Len said. "We could live in the Forest-"

"No! No, no, no no!" Zenon interrupted.

"What, so you want me to get the surgery?"

"All I'm saying is that I'm not going back to the city. Not in my lifetime. Not in any other lifetimes. If you want to go back, then... you can."

"I'll think about it."

"Well," the doctor said. "I'm going to get the President and Mr. Jamison Adair. Stay put. I'll supply you with any medicine you need, but you may only take it when under supervision. The pain should subside soon. You're just feeling some aches and pains from being stiff and immobilized for a few days. April and Len, however, you may feel some chest pains from time to time. That's just the medicine doing its work and that'll go away after a week, at the most. We found that you had some lung damage, April especially, so we needed to cure that before it got any worse."

After the doctor left, I attempted to sit up again. My entire back and neck felt horrible. Every time I turned my head, an area around the nape of my neck felt like sandpaper. Right where my head connected to my neck. Eventually, I found myself sitting upright, my back against the wall, which wasn't exactly a comfortable position, but at least I could see more now.

The beige folder beside my bed was labeled 'April Goldwyn'. I hadn't seen that before. I painstakingly reached a hand down to grab it and flip it open, but not without a few slips of paper slide out. While I was stuffing them back in, something caught my eye. A sentence underlined in red. I picked up the paper and read what it said: Scans show no sign of contamination or nuclear damage. I tilted my head. Nuclear? I thought it was called radiation damage. You couldn't get nuclear damage from the sun, after all. Perhaps a typo... but, no, the government didn't seem to be the types of people that made mistakes.

I continued to read past the underlined sentence, but found nothing other than nonsense and words and formulas that I couldn't make sense of. After finishing the document, I fished through the rest of the folder, but everything was talkin about me, not nuclear damage. Why would it, though? The doctors didn't need to know about things they already knew. I pursed my lips and placed the folder back in its spot just in time for Leanne to walk into the hospital.

"Let's get you guys out of bed. You need to start working for us ASAP," she said.

"I hurt," Len groaned. "And plus, I can't even work for you. I've got some messed up brain issues."

"Of course you can work, Alena. But just for a limited time. Once we start doing more advanced work, you'll have to make up your mind." Leanne smiled, but there was nothing happy about it.

"Oh." Len sat upright. She squeezed her eyes shut in pain as she lowered herself onto the floor. Everyone else started to do the same, including me. In a few minutes, I was standing up, but I was pretty unstable. That's what happens when you don't move for five days. I had to go help Erin out of bed, because her leg was still healing.

I handed Erin the crutches that lay on the ground beside her bed and she slid them under her arms. She said, "thanks," and tested out her new and improved leg by walking around with her crutches.

"Wonderful," Leanne said. "I'll bring you to your places." I couldn't help but wonder what our 'places' were, but I stayed silent. I'd find out sooner or later.

Leanne headed out the hospital with quick strides, and all five of us struggled to keep up. As we walked down the hallway, Leanne stopped at a door. Before I could read what the plate on the door said, she opened it, revealing a familiar room. Before I could act, I felt strong hands on my back push me forward.

"Watch it." I turned around, seeing three people I hadn't noticed following me. Three guards. Six pairs of arms and three guns to hold me back. I stumbled painfully into the room and took in my surroundings. I heard a whisper from one of the cells. "They're back..."

I heard the clatter of a cell door and glanced toward the noise and saw an open room, ready for one of us, so I thought.

"Girls in here?" the guard asked.

Leanne shook her head. "Doesn't matter." The guard shrugged then beckoned for us to come over. I stayed put until one of the guards behind me gave me a sharp push, sending me toward the cell. Four more pushes, and all of us ended up in the cell. Crash. The cell door slammed shut.

"Well, dang," Zenon muttered, then kicked the door.

"Should've seen that coming," Erin said. She set herself down on a bed and threw her crutches to the floor.

"Let us out!" Len screamed. She shook the door back and forth until a guard walked over and told her to shut up. Len reached an arm through the bars and attempted to claw at him, but the guard backed away and ignored her.

"I hate this place," Len said. "I hate everywhere we've been. Why can't any place decide that we shouldn't be locked up?" I hated to admit it, but I noticed that there was something about Len that the rest of us didn't have. Her remorseless anger, her unrelenting determination. Perhaps those were signs of radiation damage. No, I remembered, it was nuclear damage. Or both. The question still lingered in my mind.

I climbed up to the top bunk of the quadruple bunk-bed. "I hope we aren't sleeping in here," I said. "There're only four beds."

"Whatever," Zenon said. "If we are, I'll take the floor."

One of the guards laughed. "Don't worry. You'll be here a while."