The Capture Read Online Free

“But you’re willing to go along anyway?”
    He shrugged. “No one else is going to rescue those Less Thans—might as well be us. And who wants to miss out on that?”
    I loved Twitch for that—that he knew the odds were stacked against us but was willing to go along anyway.
    I pointed to the drawings in the dirt. “What’s all this?”
    His eyes lit up. “Ever heard of a zip line?” When I gave my head a shake, he used the stick to walk me through the drawings, telling me how—in pre-Omega days—people used to stretch out long wires and ride them down mountains. For fun.
    â€œWhere’d you hear this?”
    â€œRead about it in some old science magazines.”
    Figured. “So what’re you saying?” I asked.
    â€œThe enemy’s always coming at us from the ground, right? So I say we build our own zip line and attack them from the air.”
    The point of his stick landed on a series of lines and semicircles, and he told me all about inertia and acceleration and other things I only partly understood. As he spoke, his facial tics decreased. It was as though the more passionate he became, the less his face twitched.
    It seemed impossible, of course, finding the materials to build such a line, but I loved his enthusiasm. He would do his best to make this work, even though we had “no chance” of succeeding.
    Now if I could only convince the rest of them.

6.
    T HEY SHIVER THEIR WAY westward, sloshing through ankle-deep mud under leaden skies.
    Hope’s mind is a million places at once, darting back and forth between Book and Cat and what they witnessed on the darkened road . . . and her own past.
    Just seeing Dr. Gallingham brought it all back, and it’s as if the injections are happening all over again. Her body goes clammy, perspiration dots her forehead.
    I’m not sick, she has to tell herself. I am not sick.
    It feels like just yesterday that she and Faith were submerged in vats of ice, their body temperatures lowered some twenty degrees. It was a long forever before Hope recovered. Faith never did. Hope can still see her face, blue and lifeless, her unseeing eyes cutting into Hope’s soul.
    The tears press against her eyes, but she’s damned if she’s going to give in to them. Live today, tears tomorrow, her father always said.
    Her father.
    Dr. Gallingham claimed they’d worked together, that her father had somehow been involved in those experiments. Known as the Butcher of the West. Ludicrous to even think about.
    And yet the notion lingers. Something Hope needs to find out for herself. It’s one of the reasons she crawled under the fence and joined the others. A search for truth.
    She is woken from her reverie when a herd of deer goes bounding past. Everyone looks up and watches them go, their white tails raised as they gallop away. It’s a beautiful sight.
    Then a flock of birds flies past, the flap of their wings making ripples in the air. Hope begins to wonder. When a dozen chattering squirrels leap through the trees above, the wonder turns to alarm.
    â€œCool,” Flush says, admiring the nature parade.
    But Hope knows animals don’t just run in herds— at full speed, in the same direction —for the fun of it. Something’s going on.
    An instant later they hear a booming crash that shakes the ground beneath their feet. They stand there listening, afraid to speak. There’s another crash. The earth trembles.
    â€œWhat is it?” Flush asks. His voice is barely a whisper.
    â€œWhatever it is,” Twitch answers, “it’s coming from over there.” He points to the north.
    The noises come regularly now: thunderous, splintering booms that rattle the ground. Hope clutches her spear and races forward, the others right behind her. They dart through the woods, ducking beneath branches, skipping over a carpet of dead leaves.
    They come to a sudden stop when they spy the