Part One: The Crossing
Riley
I counted the seconds.
It was something I'd always done. When I was small, in the first foster home, I'd count the seconds between the screaming. If they went longer than a hundred, it meant the fighting was over. If they stopped before sixty, it meant someone was coming.
I'd never stopped. Even when I didn't need to anymore, I counted. It kept my brain busy. Kept the noise out.
So when I woke up on the bus, my head still pounding, my mouth tasting like copper, I started counting.
One. Two. Three.
The bus rattled. The engine groaned. Somewhere behind me, a kid was crying—not Rachel, someone else, a boy maybe twelve, the kind of crying that came from deep in the chest, the kind that couldn't be stopped.
Forty-seven. Forty-eight. Forty-nine.
The boy's crying turned into screaming. A guard yelled. I heard the crack of something—a baton, maybe, or a fist. The screaming stopped. The crying started again, softer now, broken.
One hundred twelve. One hundred thirteen.
I kept counting.
The bus hit a bump. My head slammed against the metal wall. Pain lanced through my skull, white and hot. I bit down on the inside of my cheek. Tasted fresh blood.
One hundred thirty-four.
I thought about the gray-haired man. The way he'd smiled when I said I'd kill him. That's what I'm counting on. What did that mean? Why would anyone want someone who wanted them dead?
Two hundred three. Two hundred four.
I thought about Helena. Her note. The map. The bag. She'd tried to get me out. She'd tried to warn me. Had she known this would happen? Had she known someone would come?
Three hundred eleven.
I thought about Rachel. Three rows ahead. Still crying. Her friend had given up trying to comfort her. Now Rachel was alone, her face pressed against the window, her body shaking with every sob. I watched her for a moment. Then I looked away.
I didn't feel bad. That was the thing. I watched her fall apart and I felt nothing. Not sympathy. Not guilt. Not even annoyance anymore. Just nothing. Like she was a character on a screen. Like none of this was real.
Maybe that was what the gray-haired man had seen. Maybe that was why I was important.
I stopped counting.
The bus slowed. The engine pitch changed, dropping from a rumble to a low thrum. Tires crunching on gravel. Then nothing. Silence.
I looked at my wrist. No watch. But I knew. I'd been counting since I woke up. Fifty-seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Exactly.
The doors opened.
Light poured in. Harsh. White. Not sunlight—artificial, the kind that came from massive overhead lamps. I squinted against it, my eyes adjusting slowly.
Figures stood in the doorway. Black shapes against the white light. I blinked. They came into focus.
Guards.
Full body armor. The kind I'd seen on the news—military-grade, matte black, designed to stop bullets. Their helmets covered everything. No faces. No eyes. Just the cold curve of visors, reflecting nothing.
They didn't speak. Didn't move. Just stood there, two of them, flanking the open doors like statues.
A voice came from somewhere. Amplified. Genderless.
"Exit the vehicle. Single file. No sudden movements. Anyone who runs will be shot."
The words hung in the air. No one moved.
Then, slowly, the boy near the front—the one with the tight jaw, the one who'd been watching exits—stood up. His hands were empty. His face was pale. He walked to the doors and stepped down into the light.
The guards didn't touch him.
One by one, the others followed. A girl with a shaved head. A boy with a broken nose. A kid who couldn't be older than ten, his face blank, his feet dragging like he was walking through water.
I waited. I let them go first. I wanted to see.
Rachel was three rows ahead. She was still crying, but she'd stopped shaking. She looked smaller than she had this morning. Smaller and older at the same time. Her friend helped her up, guided her to the doors. Rachel didn't look back.
Then it was my turn.
I stood. My legs were unsteady—from the drugs, from the blow to my head, from sitting for too long. I steadied myself against the seat, waited for the dizziness to pass. It didn't. I walked anyway.
I reached the doors. The light was blinding. I stepped down.
The ground was concrete. Cold. Smooth. I was in some kind of loading bay—massive, industrial, with a ceiling that disappeared into shadow. There were other buses. Five. Six. Seven. I counted them as my eyes adjusted.
Seven buses. All the same. Gray. Windowless. Government.
Kids were stepping off each one, blinking in the light, herded by guards who didn't speak, didn't touch, just stood there with their visored faces turned toward us like cameras.
I started counting kids. Not one by one—I didn't have time for that. I counted the buses, estimated capacity. Each bus had held maybe twenty-five kids. Some were fuller than others. Seven buses. Roughly one hundred seventy kids. Give or take.
I filed it away.
The guards moved us into a line. No words. Just gestures—a tilt of the head, a shift of the shoulder. We followed like sheep. I followed too. Not because I was scared. Because I wanted to see.
They led us through a corridor. Concrete walls. Fluorescent lights. The air smelled like salt and rust. I heard water—not close, but somewhere, the sound of waves against something solid.
We were near the ocean. Or on it.
The corridor opened into a larger space. A hangar. Massive. The ceiling arched overhead, metal ribs curving into shadow. And in the center of the hangar, taking up almost the whole space, was a ship.
Not a boat. A ship. Military. Gray hull, low and wide, designed to carry cargo. Or people.
I stopped walking. A guard pushed me forward. I didn't react. Just kept moving, kept watching.
The ship had a ramp lowered at the back, leading into its belly. Dark inside. I couldn't see past the first few feet. Kids were already climbing it, disappearing into the shadow.
I climbed too.
The inside of the ship was colder than the hangar. Metal floors, metal walls, metal ceilings. The air was thick with diesel fumes and something else—disinfectant, maybe, or the chemical smell of new paint.
The guards led us through a maze of corridors. Right. Left. Down a set of metal stairs. Another corridor. I kept track. Every turn, every door, every junction. I didn't know if I'd need it. But I was going to remember.
We stopped outside a door. One of the guards pressed a button. The door slid open with a hiss.
Inside was a room. Maybe twenty feet by twenty feet. Metal bunks bolted to the walls, three high. A drain in the center of the floor. No windows. No furniture. Just bunks and a drain and the smell of fear.
"Inside," the amplified voice said.
The kids in front of me shuffled in. Some went straight for the bunks, climbing up to claim a top berth. Some stood in the center, frozen, not knowing what to do. Rachel was one of them. Her friend had been separated somewhere in the maze. Now Rachel stood alone, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes wide.
I walked past her. I found a bottom bunk near the back, where I could see the door and the whole room. I sat down. Put my back against the wall. Waited.
More kids came in. The room filled. I counted them as they entered. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six.
Rachel ended up on the bunk above me. I could hear her breathing—fast, shallow, the sound of someone who was trying very hard not to hyperventilate.
I didn't say anything.
The door slid shut. A lock engaged—heavy, mechanical, the kind that meant business. The lights stayed on. Too bright. They didn't dim.
No one spoke. For a long time, no one spoke.
Then Rachel's voice came from above me, small and cracked.
"Riley?"
I didn't answer.
"Riley, are you there?"
I could have answered. It would have cost me nothing. A word. A sound. Something to let her know she wasn't alone.
I didn't.
Because the truth was, she was alone. We all were. And pretending otherwise wasn't kindness. It was a lie. And I didn't lie. Not anymore.
Rachel started crying again. Soft this time, like she was trying to hide it. The girl in the bunk across from me—the one with the blank face, the one I'd noticed on the bus—looked at Rachel for a moment, then looked away. She was twelve, maybe. Her face was smooth. Empty. Like a pond with nothing underneath.
I watched her for a moment. She watched me back. Neither of us spoke.
---
The days blurred.
There was no sun on the ship. No windows. No way to tell morning from night except the meals—if you could call them meals. Gray trays slid through a slot in the door twice a day. Mush. Protein paste. Water. Enough to keep us alive. Not enough to keep us strong.
I ate everything. Every time. I saw others who didn't. Who pushed the tray away, who let the food sit until the guards pulled it back through the slot. I noted them. They wouldn't last.
The room was always too bright. The lights never went off. I learned to sleep with my arm over my eyes, my body curled against the wall. Some kids screamed at night. Some kids never slept at all. Rachel stopped crying after the third day. Not because she was okay. Because she'd run out.
I kept counting.
I counted the meals. The footsteps in the corridor. The number of times the ship tilted, listing one way and then the other. I counted the hours between engine sounds. I counted the days.
Six days. Seven. Ten. Twelve.
The ship moved. I could feel it—a constant vibration through the floor, a low hum that never stopped. Sometimes it slowed. Sometimes it stopped altogether. Sometimes I heard voices outside the door, muffled, talking about coordinates and weather patterns and something called the archipelago.
I filed it all away.
On the fourteenth day, the ship stopped moving.
I felt it before the engines died—a shift in the vibration, a change in the pressure. The hum faded. The floor stopped trembling. And then, for the first time in two weeks, there was silence.
The kids in my room felt it too. Some looked up. Some sat straighter. One boy—the one with the broken nose—stood up and walked to the door, pressing his ear against the metal. He stayed like that for a long time, listening.
I stayed on my bunk. Watching. Waiting.
The door didn't open. Not for hours. The lights stayed on. The air grew stale. Some of the kids started pacing. Some started whispering. Rachel sat on her bunk, her knees pulled to her chest, her eyes on the door like it might explode.
I sat still. I didn't pace. I didn't whisper. I waited.
And then, finally, the lock disengaged.
The sound was loud in the silence—a heavy clunk, a hiss of hydraulics. The door slid open. Light poured in. Not artificial this time. Sunlight. Real sunlight, warm and golden.
The guards stood in the doorway. Full armor. Visored helmets. Rifles slung across their chests.
"Exit. Single file. No running."
The kids moved. Some fast, some slow, some stumbling. Rachel was near the front. She moved like a ghost, her feet barely touching the floor, her eyes fixed on the light.
I was near the back. I walked slowly, taking my time. I wanted to see.
I stepped out of the ship.
The air hit me first. Warm. Clean. Salt. Not the chemical salt of the loading bay, but real salt, ocean salt, carried on a wind that smelled like trees and earth and something green.
I blinked against the sunlight. My eyes had forgotten how to handle it. Everything was too bright, too sharp, too much.
We were on a dock. Wooden, weathered, stretching out into water so blue it didn't look real. Behind the dock was land. Steep. Green. Mountains rising up from the ocean, covered in trees, covered in green so thick it looked like velvet.
Island. We were on an island.
I looked around. There were other ships. Three of them, anchored in the bay. Smaller than the one we'd come from, but still military. Still gray. Still wrong.
Kids were streaming off the ships onto the dock. Hundreds of them. I started counting, stopped when I hit three hundred. There were more. Too many to count.
Guards lined the dock. A corridor of black armor, rifles at their sides, visors turned toward us. They didn't move. Didn't speak. Just stood there, watching.
A path led from the dock into the trees. Paved. New. The asphalt was dark, untouched, laid recently. It wound up the hillside and disappeared into the forest.
We walked.
Single file. Guards on either side. No one spoke. No one ran. The path climbed, and my legs burned, and my lungs ached, and I kept walking. Beside me, kids stumbled. A girl behind me fell. I heard a guard grab her, heard her cry out, heard the sharp command to move. She moved.
The forest closed in around us. The trees were massive—nothing like the woods behind my school. These were ancient, thick, their branches twisted with age. Vines hung from the canopy. The air was thick with moisture, heavy in my lungs.
I didn't know where we were. I'd never seen trees like this, never felt air like this. We were far from home. Far from anything I knew.
We walked for an hour. Maybe more. The path wound up and up, and then, finally, the trees parted.
And I saw it.
A facility. Massive. Built into the side of the mountain, half-hidden by the forest. Gray concrete. Razor wire. Watchtowers at each corner, guards visible in the glass. The building stretched up and out, windows dark, walls blank.
It looked like a prison. It looked like a fortress. It looked like somewhere people went and never came back.
We stopped at a gate. Tall. Chain-link. Topped with razor wire that glittered in the afternoon sun. A guard in a booth pressed something. The gate slid open.
We walked through.
Inside was a courtyard. Concrete. Empty. Surrounded by the facility on all sides. More guards lined the walls, their rifles raised, watching.
A voice came over a speaker. Same amplified voice. Same genderless tone.
"You have been selected for Project Last Generation. You will be evaluated. You will be trained. You will become the future. Cooperation will be rewarded. Resistance will be punished. Your survival is not guaranteed. Your success is not guaranteed. Only your participation."
I looked around at the kids standing beside me. Hundreds of them. Some were crying. Some were shaking. Some were staring at the ground. Some were staring at the guards, their faces hard, their jaws tight.
Rachel was somewhere in the crowd. I didn't look for her.
The voice spoke again.
"Now entering Phase One: Intake."
The doors opened.
The guards moved us forward. Into the building. Into the fluorescent light. Into the cold.
I walked with my head up, my eyes open, my mind counting.
I didn't know what was coming. But I was going to be ready.
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