The Outcast Ones Read online

  “Who set up those posts, then?” I ask, impressed, as one blurs with the horizon that wavers in the heat.

  Finn just shrugs. “It must have been the first rebels.”

  “How did they know about each other?”

  “Maybe there was just one safety zone back then, and the rebels divided up.” But Finn doesn’t seem sure of what he’s saying.

  “Isn’t Gustav one of the first? He would know.”

  Gustav’s consistent snoring is our only answer from the back seat.

  Finn hesitates and looks out of his side window. For some reason it’s like he doesn’t want to answer me.

  “He tells us he’s forgotten,” says Pep. It’s easy to hear that he doesn’t believe Gustav.

  I observe Gustav’s peaceful face in the rearview mirror. Is he really sleeping, or just acting? He’s been snoring for an hour already. That would be difficult to pretend.

  Although the twins seem to think the same, Jep picks up his brother’s opinion and carries it on in a whisper. “He remembers all the details of everything else, but he can’t remember this one important thing? I don’t believe a bit of it.”

  “But why would he lie?” I blurt out what’s in my head.

  “Maybe to protect us from something,” suggests Pep.

  Jep disagrees. “Or to protect himself because he knows more than he wants to admit.”

  “He was a Legion commander,” I muse. He would have known all about every plan and intention. He was connected to the source of power. I have already been wondering why a Legion commander would ever become a rebel.

  Jep goes on. “Who knows, maybe he’s still in contact with them—”

  “Stop it, all of you!” Finn interrupts. “You can’t be talking about him while he’s right here.”

  Pep doesn’t want to shut up. “What are we supposed to do? Close our eyes like you?”

  Finn grips the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turn white. He chooses his words carefully. “He’s done a lot for all of us. Without him, there would be no rebels. We have no right to mistrust him.”

  Although his words are intended to protect Gustav, the way he said it was clear. He didn’t only say that Jep, Pep and I mistrust Gustav—he included himself. But then why is he defending him? Is it only because he’s known Gustav all his life, and they’re like family to each other? Or does Finn know something he’s keeping from us? Maybe he shares the secret with Gustav.

  Much later, when it’s so dark we can hardly see the wooden posts even with the headlights, we set up our camp. The next morning we depart with the first rays of dawn. No one slept well, so we’re drooping and talk less than the day before. But this changes in an instant when the horizon shows us the first hints of tents and vehicles. Curious, I lean forward in my seat and shelter my eyes from the sun so I can see better.

  As we approach the camp, the shapes take more solid form. I count three more all-terrain vehicles—less than I expected. I don’t know what I expected, exactly. But I’m disappointed to see only about fifteen people in the group. There are more than five hundred people in the safety zone, in all the different age groups. They have technical knowledge at a level that the rebels would never comprehend. How could these people believe themselves to be capable of beating an opponent so much stronger than them in both numbers and knowledge?

  The Legion would squash them like a pesky fly. I gulp as I realise I’m going to be the fly. It’s not just anyone they want to send back as a spy—it’s me.

  We come to a standstill and all sorts of people rush over to see us. They greet the others like old friends, but peer at me out of the corners of their eyes. It’s been almost two months since I was brought to the rebels, but it seems my origin is written on my face.

  So I’m very happy when Finn finally joins me and lays a hand on my back. “This is Cleo. We rescued her from the safety zone several weeks ago and we have been able to integrate her into our group.”

  It’s like he punched me in the head. That sounds so wrong that my whole body resists it. I freeze under his touch and my throat constricts.

  I always respected the rebels for their human kindness, but he makes me sound like a successfully completed project. He says they rescued me. It never felt that way to me. Even now I don’t know if I would even want to know about the rebels’ existence if I had the choice.

  “In a few days, Cleo will return to the Legion to become an undercover Legion commander. Having a member in the highest level of government will give us more information than we have ever hoped for.” He looks so proud, like he earned all this himself, as if he made me what I am today. But he had very little to do with it. He hated me—maybe he still does.

  “How do we know we can trust her?” asks one of the women present. Her skin is brown like a bread crust, and it shimmers in the almost-noonday sun. Like most of the others, she is Grace’s age, at least twenty years older than me. She would have a lot of experience and has surely seen a lot in her life as a rebel.

  “How should Cleo know she can trust us?” It’s Gustav, answering a question with a question. He stands protectively on my other side. Immediately I’m ashamed of mistrusting him. He was fair to me from the very first moment. He understood me even when the others could only stare at me wide-eyed. “Why would she put her life on her line by going back to the Legion if she isn’t on our side?”

  The dark-skinned stranger doesn’t seem impressed. “Why would anyone volunteer to live as a prisoner in the safety zone? She’s one of them, we’ll never understand her.”

  Her words accuse me. Although she doesn’t raise her hand, in my mind I see her pointing at me. It was the same with Finn. He didn’t know me, but judged me because of where I came from. So I’m even more surprised when he’s the one who speaks next.

  “I understand your doubts, Sharon. More than anyone. I thought the same thing. To me, they were all the same—brainless robots with no will of their own and no ability to feel. But Cleo is different. She always was. Even on the night she was rescued, she showed more feeling than I could have in her situation: she comforted a little girl. They clung to each other as if they were drowning.” He pauses, turning from Sharon to me. My lips quake and my sight is blurry. I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but I’m powerless against the tears that pour from my eyes.

  Even though Finn already told me he knew he was wrong to be so mean to me, I never thought that everything was decided in the very first night. On the one hand I’m touched to find that he never hated me as much as he pretended. But on the other hand, his behaviour has hurt me so much more. He harassed me and humiliated me and knew all along that it wasn’t right.

  “Today, Cleo and the little girl are an important part of our group. They belong to the family.”

  I see the dampness shining in his eyes. But before anyone else could notice, he runs a hand across them as if to clear the dust.

  Sharon approaches me. Unlike Finn, she seems to be quick to change her opinion about me. The same is true of the others here: their faces show sympathy instead of mistrust.

  Sharon reaches out her hand. “Please forgive my words. I was wrong about you. No one could cry if they didn’t have feelings.”

  Quickly I wipe the tears from my face and rub my hand on my pants before holding it out to Sharon. She grips it firmly and honestly. Her acceptance seems to hold true for the whole group, because now the others come to welcome me.

  After we’ve set up our tents for the night and exchanged food with the others, we gather again in the middle of the camp. Dusk has settled and a large campfire crackles, sending sparks towards the sky. If the reason for our meeting were not so grave, it would be easy to find the mood comfortable. But the seriousness of the faces around me extinguishes any sense of warmth. In the light of the flames, their eyes look like black coals as shadows flit across their faces.

  I expected Sharon to be the first to strike up a conversation with me, but instead it’s a tall, wide-shouldered man wh
o approaches. A jagged scar runs from above his right eye to the left corner of his mouth. The scar tissue has swollen the area around his eye so much that he can hardly see anything on that side, and his lips are unnaturally tight on the other side so that his expression is always grim. His long, white hair is tied back in a braid.

  “Most of you know me already,” he begins, then looks to me. “But for the others, I’ll gladly introduce myself again. My name is Raymond and I come from the northern Legion.” Although his appearance is terrifying, his voice is warm. “I’m glad to see you all again, and glad that you are well. But I have bad news that will dim our joy.”

  He drops his gaze and seems to find it hard to speak. “We’ve been deceived. Everything we believed in is a lie. We have never been free, and we will never be.”

  The rest look at each other, confused, while those from the north bow their heads as if they were the reason for the news. Finn is like a statue beside me, but Sharon jumps in without hesitation. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We’re still prisoners of the Legion. The only difference is that they’ve allowed us to wander farther than those in the safety zone. We’re like laboratory rats that the people used to keep on Old Earth. We live in a glass cage while the Legion laughs at us. They’ve never seen us as a threat.”

  Even though Sharon seems to understand perfectly what he means, she shakes her head. “I don’t get it. What glass cage?” Her dark skin pales a fraction.

  “A few days ago we were hunting a wild boar through the forest. The beast was quick and clever, and sidestepped all our traps. We were almost ready to give up when it appeared to hit something and fell down dead. At first we thought it had tripped over a root, but then we saw that the ground was smooth. There were no roots, no stones, not even any rising slope at all. And the pig had burns as if it had been struck by lightning. We were careful not to follow in his footsteps. We threw a stick in the direction he had been running. It shattered in mid-air and the pieces fell to the ground. Over the days that followed, we kept experimenting, feeling out the area—”

  “Dammit, don’t talk around in circles!” Sharon interrupts him. “What did you find out?”

  “We are enclosed by a transparent, electrically-charged wall. It runs through our whole area—not far from here, in fact—and its charge is so strong that no one can get through. Who could be responsible except for the Legion?”

  The truth of it hits us like a bombshell. Deathly silence falls around the bonfire and the only sound is the crackling of the flames. Sharon tries several times to speak, but only manages to shake her head.

  As for me, I’m less surprised by the news than most others here. I always wondered why the Legion allowed the rebels to coexist with them. It would be easy for them to put a stop to all of this. Instead, they used the rebels for their own purposes. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Legion has been watching them from the air all along, unseen. But why? What would be interesting about the rebels?

  I look to Finn, questions on my tongue. I expect him to be just as upset as Sharon, but amazingly he looks very relaxed. Almost relieved. Gustav doesn’t look particularly shocked either. Maybe that was his secret—did he know about this?

  “Show it to us!” Sharon demands, her whole body quaking with tension. “I have to see it with my own eyes.”

  “It’s dark now. Let’s calm down and discuss the situation tomorrow, when our minds are clear.” Gustav tries to calm her, but he has the opposite effect.

  “No one’s making you come along, old man! Maybe you’re able to sleep, but not me. We’ve got plenty of torches. There’s no reason to wait one more second. Who’s coming with me?”

  The people from the southern Legion are ready to go with Sharon, and the northerners join them without hesitation. Jep and Pep jump up as well. They are terribly excited. But unlike the others, they don’t seem to grasp how serious this is—they’re still seeing it all as a big adventure. Even so, I join them, because I’m curious to see the limits of our freedom.

  Suddenly, Finn lays his hand on my arm. “You really want to go? It’s enough if the others do. They’ll tell us everything they see.”

  Gently but firmly I push his fingers from my skin. “I’m more surprised that it doesn’t interest you.” I’m not trying to be mean, but my words sound sharper than I intended. He stares at me and the cool blue of his eyes shines in the darkness. “What are you trying to say?”

  He’s behaving as if I insulted him, but maybe I only caught him out. His reaction tells me he thinks he needs to defend himself to me.

  “It used to be that no one could hold you back if the Legion was oppressing someone, and now you don’t even want to look at the wall. Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?”

  “Maybe I just changed my mind.”

  “What would you do that for?”

  “Because you showed me that not everything the Legion produces is bad.”

  I can hardly believe my ears. What’s happened to him to make him see things so differently? “The Legion killed your parents and kidnapped your sister. Have you forgotten?”

  With a loud slap, his hand lands on my cheek. The burn hisses on my skin and makes me cry out in shock. He hit me! I never expected that. He hasn’t always been nice to me, but even when I thought he hated me—he never hurt me.

  His hand hangs between us in the air. He looks at it as if it wasn’t part of his body, then turns his angry glare on me. “I can never forget. But I thought I might have found what I was looking for. I see I was wrong.”

  I don’t understand. I can’t speak. A warm arm comes around my shoulders. Afraid, I look into Jep’s eyes.

  Pep attacks Finn. “Are you crazy? You can’t just hit her. She’s a girl, dammit!”

  Finn avoids the argument by turning his back and disappearing in the direction of the tents.

  “Idiot!” Pep yells.

  “Don’t worry, you can sleep in our tent tonight,” says Jep with a mischievous grin. “But first, let’s go look at this wall.”

  “If we’re lucky, Finn might run into it and end up as a roast chicken,” Pep jokes. I don’t find it at all funny, but I’m thankful that they want to cheer me up. They make it seem like Finn is the bad guy and I’m the scapegoat—but they didn’t hear what I said to him. I feel guilty. I should never have mentioned Finn’s parents or Zoe like that. To accuse him of forgetting them must have hurt him deeply. If I were in his place I would have slapped me too. What I want most now is to run after him and say I’m sorry, but he probably wouldn’t even listen. By now I know it’s better to leave him alone when he’s like this.

  We walk fast and purposefully as we set out, although it seems to me that we’re marching out into the endless plains without any sense of direction. But Raymond knows where he’s going, and the group stutters to a halt when he stops. Only the dim light of the torches and a few battery-powered lamps light the way. I can only make out vague silhouettes. The twins and I are at the back of the group, and it’s hard to see Raymond and Sharon at the front. The others start to murmur and we learn that Raymond is throwing stones ahead. We must have almost reached the place he believes the electric fence to be.

  The air moves as we fidget around. Carefully I turn in a full circle, but I can’t see anything but blackness. Not even the lights of the camp.

  A deafening boom drives me to my knees as the world around me is flooded in bright light. It hurts my eyes—I squeeze them tightly shut and cover my ears with my hands. Seconds later, something hard hits my right shoulder and steals my breath. I gasp for air.

  Just a few metres from me stands a wall of sparkling light. It throws bolts like lightning on our side as well as the other side, flashing across the plain in a creepy flickering light. In front of the wall, I see people on the ground, cowering together. Some aren’t moving. Others are fleeing past me, their eyes wide with fright.

  I want to look for the twins, but another frightening sound emerges, a hum even lo
uder than the crackling of the electric fence. I look up. There’s an army of flying machines headed straight for us.

  Someone roughly grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet. “Come on, or do you want to get fried?” It’s Sharon, yelling in my ear. She drags me with her away from the wall. She’s running so fast that I trip over my own feet.

  “What about the others?” I yell back at her, but before she can answer, a bomb from one of the planes hits the ground beside us, tearing us apart. I lose the ground under my feet, falling forwards. I just manage to break my fall with my outstretched arms. Bombs explode on all sides of me. Shots zip past me. People run screaming. I’ve lost all sense of orientation. The main thing is to get as far away as possible from the electric fence.

  Knees shaking, I fight to regain my feet and run without turning around. On my right, one of the planes has landed and Legion members in blue suits are pouring out. The C group: the Legion’s guards and soldiers. For some reason, they don’t want us to know about the electric fence. Or is there another reason for them to attack us? Did they know about the black market meeting?

  Suddenly, the landscape changes: I must have gotten off course. The flat land is behind me, a slope ahead, and there are hills and valleys. Stones rattle under my soles as I try to climb a rise. A beam of light touches me and I turn in a panic. I see the vague form of a blue suit. They’re after me.

  My heart is beating in my throat, sweat runs down my back. I crawl up the rise and stumble down the other side. The Legion soldier’s light is close to me the whole time. It jumps and dances like a wild animal, enlarging my shadow to enormous proportions. I pant for air and the stones under my feet start to roll.

  I hit the ground on my back. The air is slammed out of my lungs and the metallic taste of blood spreads in my mouth. My head rings with the impact and for a moment I’m blinded. Breathing hard, I crawl away from the soldier although his light is on me.