The Elementalists

ROBIN

                  

I land the blanket at a campsite that is about five miles north of our school. Jamal is a mess; his eyes are red and puffy from crying. He probably thinks that his cousin is dead, even though I've assured him that they're still here, scouting the area for us.

   "Is Mark going to be okay?" Emma asks me. She looks scared, and I guess that in this case I probably would, too. "They're not going to... to..."

   "No," I say, "not yet. He's the bait. They want us to come try to rescue him, so they can capture us, too."

   "Are we going to save him?" Jamal sniffles. "I don't give a crap if you say that we can't go, because I'm going after my cousin!"

   "We'll go after him," I assure him, "but right now, they're transporting him to Washington, D.C., so they can keep him under safe keeping."

   "Why Washington?" Emma asks. "Wouldn't they take him straight to, like, I don't know, some science lab for testing?"

   "Shut up!" Jamal yells. "I don't want to hear this! Agh!"

   "Sorry!" Emma cries as Jamal stomps away and collapses on the grass, sobbing. "Oh, Gosh, Jamal, I didn't mean..."

   "It's okay," I say, "he'll get better." I hope.

   I look up at the sky and wonder what it would be like to be able to live up there. It would be so much more peaceful, with no evil men chasing me, and I think I would enjoy it. But I think about my friends, and Jamal, and Mark, who need me, so bad, right here, right now, and I decide that I'm better off down here.

   "Washington D.C. is where the Lab is," I explain. "Laboratory Prison is what the people inside call it. The Lab for short. It's where the abnormal go. The mind readers, fortune tellers, kids who are us...and experiments..." I look over at Jamal. "It's disguised as a mental hospital, and many of the kids trapped there go mental. The adults... they usually die off... or disappear..."

   Emma's face is full of horror. "They kill us off?" she whispers, clearly full of hatred for this place.

   "Once you reach eighteen, you're no use to them," I explain. "They can't experiment on you unless you're dead. So...yeah, they kill us off. It's like a human animal shelter." I sigh and add, "They say that they're 'keeping the world safe from people like us.'"

   "They're taking my cousin to that place?" Jamal hisses. "I won't let them! I'll kill them! I swear—!"

   The poor boy doesn't finish before bursting into tears. He covers his face with his hands and collapses back onto the ground.

   "Emma, leave him be," I say. "We need rest. Tomorrow will be a long day; we'll go searching for Mark around here. If we don't find him, we'll go to the Lab."

   "We'll find him," Jamal sobs. "We have to find him! He's my cousin.... I can't just leave him..."

   "We'll find him," I assure Jamal, "whether it's here or in Washington D.C."

   Jamal nods with teary eyes and curls up into a ball. I worry that he's beginning to lose his grip on reality—whatever little bit of it that he has left, anyways—but quickly shove those thoughts to the back of my mind. That's the least of my worries right now.

   "I can't sleep," Emma moans, "without a bed, or at least a sleeping bag or a tent. Do you really expect us to sleep out here, with no tent or anything? That's not possible!"

   I laugh. "Sorry," I say, "I forget that you guys haven't ever done this before."

   "'Before'?" Jamal hisses. "What do you mean, 'Before'? You've done this before? Ha, I find that hard to believe."