Bam turns to his guard. “Go get me something to drink.”

He looks confused. “But all the water and stuff is in here.”

“Fine. Then go get me some sushi!”

“Huh?”

“Could you really be that stupid? Just get the hell out of here!”

“Yes, Miss Bam.” He hurries out, practically tripping over his weapon.

Hayden is amused. “â??‘Miss Bam.’ Sounds like a good name for a kindergarten teacher. Have you ever considered the profession?”

“I don’t like children.”

“You don’t like adults much either. Or, for that matter, anything in between.”

For some reason, that makes tears rise like bile in her, but she bears down and holds them in, refusing to let Hayden see them.

“You’re bleeding,” Hayden says. Concerned, he takes a step toward her, but she waves him off.

“I’m fine.” She touches her head. There’s a small cut where she bumped it on the ceiling. The least of her problems. She’ll make an appointment with the kid with the dental floss. “We need to talk.”

“About?”

She checks to make sure the guard hasn’t come back and they are truly alone. “I promised you’d have my ear. So bend it. Now.”

54 • Force

The raid comes without warning, like a team of Juvie-rounders in the night. A real special-ops team—nothing like the playacting kids Starkey calls special ops. The invaders tranq the storks guarding the entrance to the mine before they can even raise their weapons and flood into the tunnels, tranq’ing anyone who comes into view. Their directive is simple: Get to Mason Starkey.

The commotion wakes kids deeper in the mine in time for them to scramble for weapons, which they’ve learned to use without hesitation and without fear. They bring several of the intruders down, but there are more behind them—and this force is armed with weapons the storks have never seen: squad machine guns that spray tiny tranq-tipped darts at such an alarming rate, they create an inescapable wall of unconsciousness before them. The layers of protection surrounding Starkey peel away until he’s exposed and vulnerable before the invading force.

Starkey swings his own weapon up, but fumbles with it just long enough for his attackers to grab it and grab him.

The entire operation is over in less than five minutes.

55 • Starkey

It was madness to believe he was untouchable. He knows that now. The storks’ hiding place was well concealed, but the Juvies are skilled at ferreting out the most resistant of AWOLs. Starkey struggles, but it’s no use—and his ruined hand is in such pain from the iron grip of his assailants that the rest of his body drains of strength, just as it had when Bam had grabbed him.

All around him in the tunnels are the unconscious bodies of his precious storks with tiny spots of blood dotting their clothes where the tranq darts embedded in their skin. No one’s fighting anymore. Anyone still conscious is on the run. The storks know they are outarmed and outclassed.

“Go deeper into the mine!” Starkey yells to them. “Deep as you can go. Don’t let them take you alive.”

Although he’s terrified, he holds in his heart the anger that he’s wielded so well and the knowledge that as a martyr he will live forever.

Wind whips the entrance of the mine, but it’s not a natural wind. A helicopter darker than the night descends from above, tumbleweeds exploding out from its landing spot, as if racing to escape its crushing weight. This time Starkey has no trick up his sleeve to escape capture, so he embraces it. I am important enough to be taken by helicopter, he thinks.

The door is opened, and he’s thrown inside, landing on all fours. His left hand feels like it will shatter all over again. Why don’t they tranq me? I can’t bear this. I want it over.

He feels the vertical acceleration of the helicopter lifting off, and when he looks up, he sees within this large industrial helicopter a sight he was not expecting. The space, rather than being filled with steel restraining chairs, is richly appointed. It’s a lavish sanctuary of leather, brass, and polished wood, more like the cabin of a yacht than the inside of a helicopter.

A man in dress slacks and a comfortable sweater sits in one of several plush chairs facing a television screen. He pauses the TV with a remote, swivels to face Starkey—and Starkey wonders, as nausea and disorientation fill him, if maybe he was tranq’d after all, and this is a momentary hallucination before he passes out entirely. But his vision holds; the scene before him is real, and his dizziness is nothing more than the motion of the helicopter.

“Mason Michael Starkey,” says the man. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

He has dark hair, graying at the temples. He speaks crisp English with no hint of any regional accent and diction so perfect, it’s unsettling.

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