[scifan] plantation 01 - plantation Read online

  “Turns out you guessed right, but on this we can’t guess. We have to go around and approach the camp from the south and up the hills.”

  “And what would that accomplish exactly?” Damian says.

  “From the hills, we’ll have a vantage point and we’ll be able to see what’s going on in the camp without being seen.”

  “Finn,” Damian says, “I appreciate your dedication to the Saviors, your enthusiasm, your fierceness, your selflessness. I really do. But this is the stupidest idea you have come up with so far, even worse than trying to attack the alien ship.”

  “You know I’m right,” Finn says as his features harden. “You can’t protect us from danger anymore and you can’t make this go away. My mistake, your mistake, it doesn’t matter. The danger is in our backyard. How long do you think it will take them before they discover our tracks? We don’t have the time to cover them up, you know that. They’ll find us no matter where we go. It’s better to know what we’re facing.”

  “I won’t listen to this nonsense,” Damian says. “Let’s get going.” I’m pretty sure he’s doing his best to resist the temptation to jump Finn. He puts his backpack around his shoulders. Theo and Doc follow his example.

  “Stop it,” Daphne says. “Finn is right, it’s too late to play it safe.”

  At this point, I believe Daphne will say anything to contradict Damian. Something has happened between them and it’s not good.

  “We don’t have time for your embittered antics, Daphne,” Damian says. “Pick up your stuff, we’re heading to the encampment on the mountains.”

  “I’m staying right here with Finn,” she says with a face as hard as stone. “We’ll do this by ourselves if we have to. We’ll come and find you later.”

  I am stunned at this turn of events. It’s anyone’s guess what is going to happen from now on. There’s a definite rift forming among the Saviors and if the clash of powers keeps escalating, we might end up destroying ourselves.

  “Finn didn’t say he’d stay by himself,” I protest and glance at him for support. He doesn’t return my glance. He looks at Daphne and I can’t read him like I’ve been able to in the past.

  “Finn is a big boy, Freya, you can’t keep telling him what to do,” Daphne says.

  “Finn?” I’m desperate and I can’t hide it.

  “You’re right, Freya,” he says, “I didn’t say I’d stay by myself, but as it turns out, I don’t think I’ll have to. Daphne’s staying. Who else is in?”

  I think my head will explode any minute now as the pressure inside my skull gets unbearable. I look to Damian but he pays no attention to me.

  Damian’s entire being focuses in as he drops his backpack to the ground and punches Finn on the nose. Finn is taken aback for a moment, but only for a moment. He springs back up onto his feet quick as lightning and jumps in the air to kick Damian in the stomach.

  Theo and Doc try to get between Damian and Finn but they are both too strong for the younger boys. They would keep fighting and surely crush anyone who attempts to get in their way.

  “You are to blame for this,” I accuse Daphne. “Help me put an end to it!”

  She nods and with a swift movement throws herself behind Damian, grabs his right wrist and twists it behind his back. I barely have time to get my loop out of the pocket of my pants and throw it around Finn’s shoulders and upper arms. I pull the rope and Finn falls to the ground.

  I quickly fall on him, covering his body with mine as a shield against Damian who has managed to free himself from Daphne’s stranglehold.

  Damian swears when he sees me. He slips and falls as Daphne grabs his legs. Damian lands on the ground next to Finn and me. His breathing is hot and irregular in my ear. His face is bloody, his hair a total mess. He stares in my eyes for a long moment, then gets up and reaches for his backpack.

  Finn’s body is in pain, I can feel his anguish underneath me and I am grateful that he has stopped fighting my rope, that he stays where he is.

  “Let’s go,” Damian says to the Saviors and takes the way back to the mountains. I notice that he has a slight limp.

  I slowly get off Finn and scan his injuries. I don’t think anything’s broken. He has a bloody nose and a split lip. “You will be fine,” I tell him. “Let’s go with Damian now, it’s time.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere, Tick,” he whispers. “You go. I’ll come and find you in the mountains when I have seen with my own eyes what’s going on.”

  “Finn, I beg you,” I say, my eyes welling with tears. I already know it’s of no use. Once he makes up his mind, nothing can change it.

  “I’ll stay,” Nya says with an indifferent voice.

  “Me, too”, Rabbit says.

  One by one, the young Saviors line up next to Finn: Tilly, Scout, Biscuit. They all love him.

  That leaves Theo, Zoe, Doc and me in need to make a decision.

  “I’m sorry,” Theo says, “it’s all my fault. I must have done something wrong when I linked to the satellite. They probably noticed my attempts to send messages as Plantation-4. I don’t know. All I know is something’s gone wrong. I can’t let Damian down again. It’s me you should all be mad at.”

  We are too tired and shocked to tell him what we think, that it’s not his fault, that he is the reason we have accomplished so much as a team. Without his tech knowledge and genius, we’d just be fighting with knives.

  Doc sides with Theo and he’s probably relieved that he didn’t have to be the first one to follow Damian. Doc will always be faithful to Damian. I know that now.

  Zoe is torn between her loyalty to Theo and Damian, and her friendship with Daphne. In the end, she decides to follow Damian.

  The four of them are now looking at me and I don’t know why I stay silent. The decision isn’t an easy one but it was made before the issue even arose. My decision was made the day I first saw Finn. What’s keeping me then from putting an end to the waiting and declare my loyalty to him?

  I want to go back in time, but that’s not possible. I can’t retrace my steps until I get to the moment when Finn decided to rebel and challenge Damian, the moment when he and Daphne started to get close. I can’t make it all go away. So I look at Damian and tell him that I’m sorry.

  He shakes his head. “I hope I’ll see you all soon,” he says, “safe and sound, but I can’t take part in this madness. I can’t condone mutiny.”

  Doc comes to me and hands me a tube with some ointment.

  “For Finn,” he says. “Apply it on the bruises and lesions every two to three hours. It will give him quick relief.”

  My heart breaks as Damian walks away with Doc, Theo and Zoe. Deep down I know that Damian’s right. As Finn was right when he told me that freedom comes with rules and responsibilities.

  “Let’s take a two-minute break,” Finn says, breathlessly, “and then we’ll be off south.”

  He takes my hand and leads me to sit with him behind a tree away from everyone’s eyes. “You don’t have to stay on my behalf,” he whispers. “Do what you believe is right. You have to stay true to yourself, remember?”

  “Bug off, Finn. Are you staying true to yourself right now? Is this what you’re doing?” I take the tube out of my pocket and start applying the ointment to his injuries.

  “It might not look that way, but yes, absolutely,” he replies.

  I pull him by the collar, bring his face close to mine and look straight into his green eyes. “What were you doing with that box last night?”

  My question catches him unawares and he can’t come up with anything to say for a while. He stares at me puzzled and shocked.

  “You followed me?” he says finally.

  “I was worried about you.”

  I can see my words have somehow brought back the burden of that box. “Let it go,” he says. “You don’t have to follow me around and you don’t have to know about everything I do.”

  “Well, isn’t that a joke?” I say, frustrat
ed. “Everything? I barely know anything about the things you do anymore.”

  “You are in no position to judge, Freya. Do you think this is easy for me?”

  “Do you want to know what I think, Finn? Honestly? I think you were wrong about attacking the ship and you’re wrong about checking on the Sliman now. And both times you defied Damian just to be wrong.”

  “If that’s what you think, why did you stay?” he says, irritated.

  “Because you are everything to me and I can’t live without you,” I say and try to run off but he is stronger than me. He forces me to sit back down.

  “It will be all right,” he says as he closes me in his arms and places his lips on the spot between my cheek and my mouth. I turn my face slightly and our lips touch. I can feel the cut on his upper lip and the warmth of his bruised skin against mine. I feel like crying. We stay like this for what seems like an eternity until we hear Daphne calling Finn’s name.

  “We’re right here,” he says and the magic is gone.

  Daphne shows up, nervous and disheveled, but in control of herself again.

  “We have to go, Finn,” she says. She takes a side look at me. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  “Finn is hurt,” I say.

  “I know, but there’s nothing to be done about it right now. The kids are getting restless and antsy. Finn, there’s no time for breaks. Let’s do this and get the hell out of here.”

  Finn gets up and so do I. “Gather everybody up,” he tells Daphne. “We’re heading east before turning south.”

  The way to the camp is hard and we’re exhausted. We’ve barely slept in the last twenty-four hours. We’re frustrated and worried, but we keep on walking, we keep checking our touchpad screens for sensors and cameras, we keep silent and stay focused. We are companions and we are rebels. We are the Saviors. Beaten down, separated, torn but determined.

  We have to go in a circle, first east, then southeast, so we can eventually reach the camp from the south.

  I can’t stop thinking about Damian, Theo, Zoe and Doc. I want to believe that we will see them again soon, that the conflict between Damian and Finn will be resolved and everything will return to normal.

  I want to believe that we will restore harmony within our group and work to achieve our goals even if we have to start all over. It’s a shock to me that I should think like that, since I am the one who sees doom in everything, as Damian so aptly put it.

  What I want the most is to get Finn to talk to me once we are safe, get him to trust me again, go to the library with me, chat, train and laugh with me.

  I’m worried about him. He’s injured and he has to be a leader to us all. His own feelings and needs don’t matter anymore. I know him. He’ll never complain. I don’t think he’s even aware of his limitations. He’d never give in to Damian during a fight even though he knows that Damian is the superior fighter, that he could crush a bear with his hands.

  We reach the hills to the south after a long, arduous climb. Finn points to the hill closest to the camp. We reach the top within minutes. The view is overwhelming. My heart sinks at the sight of the abandoned facilities five hundred feet below us overrun by Sliman. There’s maybe thirty of them and although we don’t have a view of the camp in the forest, it would make sense that there are more Sliman there.

  Tilly spots two aliens outside the Armory. I take out my binoculars and watch them for a while. It looks like they are in charge of the operation, giving precise instructions to the Sliman. They are dressed in the long black and red capes of the directors of the Plantations. Every Plantation has five Directors, each one in charge of a different section.

  The aliens have protective glasses on. They don’t like the sunlight because it makes their vision even less effective. The longer they stay on Earth, the weaker they become, which is why they are replaced at certain intervals. Even the planet is trying to get rid of them.

  “We’re dead meat,” Biscuit whispers.

  “If we’re meat, we’re already dead,” Rabbit says.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Tilly says.

  We move backward and downhill a bit so that we cannot be seen from below. We all look to Finn with questioning eyes.

  “Should we retreat?” Daphne asks him. “Join the others in the mountains? We could catch up by nightfall.”

  Finn tightens his fists. His mind is on overload.

  “Daphne is right,” I say. “Let’s go, Finn. We’ve seen all we needed to see.”

  Finn turns to Tilly. “Can you hear anything that the aliens say?”

  Tilly shakes her head. “I can’t make anything out. It’s all mumbled, more like a noise than actual speech. Nobody understands what they say when they talk their gibberish anyway.”

  “Try harder,” Finn says. “Most Sliman don’t understand gibberish either. They’ll use our language eventually and any information is of great value.”

  “What kind of information are you hoping to find?” Daphne says.

  “For starters, we need to know if this is a coincidence—if they discovered the camp by accident, or if they knew exactly what they were looking for and where to find us. What if they have updated their security systems? The satellites? That would be crucial information.”

  “What if there’s a traitor among us?” Nya says with a face as serious and expressionless as always, hands tight around her bow.

  Finn considers her words but says nothing. He turns to Tilly again. “Is there any way you can catch some of their conversation? I know you have been able to make out conversations from a comparable distance before.”

  “It’s the stress that’s interfering with your abilities,” Daphne suggests. “Look at me, Tilly. Listen.”

  She takes Tilly’s hands in hers and talks slowly to her. It’s the first time I hope her magic works. “You can do this, Tilly,” Daphne says. “You can be who you want to be. You can use your extraordinary powers of hearing to help us get out of this mess. We trust in you.”

  Tilly blinks her eyes as if she has just woken up from a nap. “I’ll need to get a bit closer,” she says and just like that her mind is made up. She will make this happen.

  I see the guilt on Finn’s face as he assesses the situation. I have a terrible, painful thought that I can’t shake off. What if his stubbornness is somehow related to the box that he hid in the forest? Why didn’t I confront him right then? Why didn’t I dig out the box? Why didn’t I report all this to Damian?

  There’s a possibility this is all my fault. My mind wanders back to Finn. What if I’m being terribly unfair to him? How can I even think like that when he’s the one person I trust completely?

  I glance at him again. The guilt is still there on his face. Maybe it’s about the fight he had with Damian, his lack of self control. Then again, it might be about pushing Tilly to her limits when she’s obviously nervous and uncertain. Or it might be something else altogether.

  “All right, Tilly,” Finn says. “You should move closer to the voices. I will show you how to go down the hillside. Are you up for it?”

  “Yes,” Tilly says. “I want to try.”

  “You have to be extremely careful,” Finn says. “The slightest mishap, and they will hear or, worse, see you. You will have to crawl down the slope and you’ll have to go very slow, very quiet, which can be tricky with all the dry branches and leaves on the ground. The slope is very steep, as you see, and you will find yourself hanging from a thread at times. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Tilly says without hesitation.

  “How much closer do you think you will have to get?”

  “About a hundred feet, maybe. That should do it.”

  “Okay, I know you can do this, Tilly.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Biscuit says. Concern has taken over his features.

  Finn shakes his head. “No. Absolutely not. One person is risky, but two is suicide. You can’t underestimate the Sliman guards’ alertness or the alien se
nsory receptor devices.”

  Tilly gets on her stomach and slowly crawls to the edge of the hilltop.

  “The Sliman are moving in all directions,” she says. “They’re removing our furniture and our supplies. The aliens are supervising them.”

  We all crawl to the edge after Tilly. It’s rare for the aliens to go outside the Plantations. They’d never risk going out in plain daylight if they didn’t think it was important. No matter how they discovered our camp, they now know about us and they don’t like it one bit.

  Tilly crawls about two feet down the steep slope. She’s slower than a maimed turtle, calculating every movement before she makes it. The minutes go by in slow anguish; our heads hang from the top of the hill watching Tilly’s excruciating descent through bushes and dried out branches.

  She reaches a trunk of what must have been a pine tree lying dead on the ground. It’s a thick trunk and it’s blocking Tilly’s view.

  She decides to go around it and changes direction. She’s making very slow progress but she’s patient and determined. When her head reaches the edge of the trunk, she turns back to reassure us that everything is fine. She goes back to her mission when suddenly her sleeve gets caught on the rough edge of the trunk.

  Tilly tries to free herself but the fabric is stuck to the sharp splinters on the edge of the wood and she has to pull her sleeve out. As she does that, she accidentally pushes the trunk and it gets loose. It slides a few inches forward, then stops. A couple seconds later, the trunk gets moving down the steep slope again, this time more forcefully, gaining speed with every split second, carrying Tilly with it as her sleeve is still stuck to the edge.

  “Tilly,” I whisper and Finn pinches my hand hard to stop me.

  “Hush,” he whispers and I freeze.

  Tilly rolls several feet down the hill before she manages to untangle herself from the trunk. She lies still, hoping the bushes will hide her. When she lifts her head a few inches off the ground, she sees what we all can see: a huge Sliman guard is looking at her direction, trying to see through the shrubbery.