Unity Read Online Free

here to tell us what to do now. If the pilots survived the crash, they’re probably still trying to recover. For now, we’re on our own.
    “Hurry up,” a girl I can’t see says, sounding a little more pushy than I appreciate. Given the circumstances, I can’t blame her, so I refrain from commenting. What I don’t do is hurry. I’m one misplaced slippery step from toppling over, and the way my head feels, another good clunk to my melon might undo me.
    A pair of dangling arms glow green in the light as I approach. I freeze for a moment, unsettled by the limbs’ stillness. There are eight people hanging upside down, I tell myself. And you’re the only one who can get them down. Move!
    I reach out and take hold of the wrist, below which is a Support brand. The temperature of the skin is the first sign of something wrong. Then the lack of a pulse. And then, I turn my head up to the face of a young girl, her eyes locked open, staring down at nothing.
    “Is she dead?” someone asks. A boy, I think.
    “I think Nick is, too,” says the more impatient feminine voice.
    The arm swings slowly when I let go, moving in the slow circles of a pendulum before coming to a stop. Gasping in a quick breath and setting my compartmentalization ability to full power, I move across the upside-down aisle and encounter my second ever corpse. As I reel back from the sight of a body whose ribs have been compressed from the foam’s pressure, I bump into a hand that fumbles across my head and through my hair like a scurrying mouse. Without thinking, I duck and spin. My feet squeak against the slick metal ceiling and then seem to launch out like there are little rockets attached to my heels.
    My breath catches as I reach out, finding a hand, and I catch hold. My fall turns into a slide, stopping beneath the upside down person who caught me. Only she didn’t catch me. She had nothing to do with it. In the dull light provided by the glowstick now embedded in the slime beneath me, I see a dead girl’s eyes looking down at me.
    A second hand reaches out of the gloom. “Here.” It’s the impatient one.
    I take her hand, noting another Support brand, and I manage to not topple over. The girl is strong and hoists me to my feet so that our eyes—mine dark brown, her’s light blue—are inches apart, though rotated 180 degrees. Her long wavy hair hangs like a golden curtain. “Get. Me. Down.”
    Without a word, I comply with the girl’s request. Working together, she’s on her feet beside me in seconds. “I’ll check the front,” she says. “Help Gizmo.”
    Gizmo? A nickname , I decide, and I look for the person whose mousey hand ran through my hair. I find the boy behind me, his face bloodied, his chest rising and falling in quick but labored breaths. Kid’s not doing well.
    “Gizmo,” I say, taking his warm hand.
    He says nothing. Just stares at me with crazy wide eyes, the white orbs accentuated by his dark skin. He’s terrified. A dying animal. Perhaps literally. But his silence might not be from fear. Unity, like Brook Meadow, is comprised mostly of kids whose minds are unique. Like Sig, Gizmo might just not talk.
    “I’m going to get you down now, okay?” When he doesn’t offer a reply or show any sign of apprehension, I reach up and unbuckle him. He slides into my arms, and I have no trouble spinning the boy’s skin-and-bones frame right-side-up. To my relief, Gizmo shakes his head gently and remains standing. I crack a fresh light stick and crouch beside him.
    “Do you know Daniel?”
    He nods.
    I point to the rear end of the transport, some twenty feet away, where Daniel’s silhouette can be seen in the light of his glowstick, which he’s wedged into something on the wall. I can hear him grunting with exertion. The hatch’s manual operation is giving him some trouble.
    “That’s him. He’s getting the door open.” I bend down and pick up Gizmo’s go-pack. He takes the pack and nods when I say, “See if you can