The Unaffected

➠2.2

we run through the hallways, Nick leading the way. He seems to know his way around here. When I ask him about this, he tells me he's a soldier.

"Oh, okay," I say. "Are you all soldiers?"

"Yeah. We were all captured at similar times and decided to plan an escape when enough of you came. We figured "strength in numbers". So once you came, Matt, Katie, and I started planning our great escape."

"So far it's working," I tell him.

"Don't jinx it!" he says, wagging a finger at me in mock-reproach. I laugh. "How old are you?"

"I'm almost twenty," he replies. "You?"

"Fifteen. You seem too immature for twenty," I tell him.

"I use my immaturity as a cover," he says. "You seem too serious for a fifteen-year-old."

"I blame my childhood for that," I tell him quietly.

We stop talking after that.

Finally, we get to a pair of large doors. "This is the way out," Matt says, opening them.

Outside takes my breath away.

The ground is covered with some sort of blue growth, and there are small, fat, bristly plantlike things growing from it. The air is thick and moist and hot, like a rainforest. I look up to see a clear dark sky, sprinkled with stars. It must be night time.

"It's always dark," Katelyn tells me. "We're very far away from the sun, after all."

"Then how is it warm?" I ask.

"Thermal springs. They run under almost all of this planet. Did you know that they call it Shakespeare?" She laughs. "Apparently they invaded in Elizabethan times, and everyone was talking about Shakespeare like he was some incredible person with power over the entire world or something. So they wanted to name their planet after something like that. They speak English here, too, which is strange. In a lot of the isolated areas they speak old English. And almost every kid's named after a character in a Shakespeare play."

I laugh. "It's funny."

She nods.

Ella walks over to us. "Is that true?" she asks.

Katelyn nods.

"How strange. I've always wanted to read Shakespeare, you know. But there's never been any opportunities to."

"No, me neither," I say. "I can barely read."

Katelyn nods again. "Come on. We're getting in the shuttle."

She leads us to a large vehicle, similar to a van, and opens the door for us. We all climb in. The seats are hard and cold, but it's nice to sit on something other than a floor for once.

I sit between Ella and John. Ella seems tired, but John is visibly excited. This must be nice for them to finally get out. I hadn't been there long, and it was still horrible.

I find myself drifting off into a fitful half-sleep, and when I wake up, we've stopped.

"Okay, everybody out," Nick says. "We're staying here for a while. It's far enough away from the compound that they won't think to look here, and the owners of this house are sympathetic to us humans."

"Do any humans live here?" I ask.

"On this planet, or this house?" Nick asks.

"Either."

"Well there are a few on this planet, mostly ones who've been cured by the aliens because they want to serve them. It's a pretty small planet, so there isn't really much of anything. But there is only one human in this particular house, who's an Unaffected like the rest of us."

Interesting, I think as we get out of the car. I've heard that the Cured still have the Marks, so you couldn't tell them apart from the rest of the Affected - unless, of course, they were visibly older than eighteen. I wonder if any of them are secretly trying to help us. I ask Katelyn this, and she says there are a few.

"That's good," I say.

"Yes. It's incredibly dangerous so we're very grateful for them. But so far they haven't done much. There are only a hundred Unaffecteds and people sympathetic to our cause, while there's thousands of enemies. So we need everyone we can."

"Strength in numbers."

Katelyn nods. "How old are you guys, anyway?"

"John and I are sixteen, Tom's eighteen, and Scar's fifteen," Ella replies.

"Haven't met any Unaffecteds as young as you lot in a while," Matt remarks. Something about his tone is patronizing, which immediately irritates me. I can't stand it when people patronize me. That's literally the one thing that gets to me.

"Isn't the youngest Unaffected supposed to be the most powerful?" Ella says.

He nods. "The Hundredth. We need to find him or her."

"It's probably around twelve or eleven years old, so I hope it hasn't died," Nick puts in.

This kid's our only hope, I suspect. It had better not be dead.