I have to find some way to get over without setting off an alarm. My ignorance of how this type of device works puts me at a disadvantage. This is one case where Miles would have come in handy, I realize with remorse. Don’t think about it, I tell myself. You made your decision, and it was based on keeping him safe. Keeping everyone safe. It’s too late for regrets.
I wonder if I can wrap something around my hands and feet and climb—if the wires will only shock unprotected skin. I test the fence, throwing a piece of cooked rabbit against it. As soon as the flesh hits the metal, I hear a crackling sound and the meat falls to the ground with a line of black singed across it. I wrap it in cotton cloth and throw it again. The same thing happens, the cloth burning in the area that touched the metal. Climbing the fence while it is still electrified would be a very bad idea.
I think of the problem from every angle, and cannot come up with another way to get over the fence without disabling the box. This means possibly alerting the guards, significantly shortening the time I have to come up with an escape plan and see it through. So be it. I have no other choice.
I sit down near the fence and close my eyes, picturing the box in my mind as I summon my connection to the Yara. And as the connection is made, an image comes to me of lots of tiny multicolored wires coming together in a bundle and plugging into metal slots. I choose the bundle of wires attached to a large black cord and imagine a small flame underneath it.
I watch as the colored plastic sheathing begins to melt and drip, and the exposed wires grow red with heat. The inside of the shiny silver box glows until finally a few small sparks ignite and the whole thing explodes in a combustion of blue flame. I open my eyes and watch the flashing red light dim and disappear.
Around me, the night is silent. I can barely see the fence against the sky’s velvet blackness. I rise to my feet and approach, carefully watching the now-dark electrical box high above me. To be sure that the electricity is truly off, and it wasn’t just the warning light that I affected with my fire, I do my rabbit-meat test again. The wrapped-up bundle hits the fence and falls to the ground unaffected. No noise. No sparks. But how can I be sure the surrounding boxes aren’t programmed to take over for the disabled one?
I remember the shattered look of the guard when his colleague turned the fence back on before he was down. “You could have killed me,” he said.
The charge is definitely lethal to humans. But I have no other choice. I’ll have to risk it.
Fear sizzles through my chest as I move my hand an inch closer to the wires. Pulling my hand away, I back up a few steps. And then, running, I jump and fling myself as high up the fence as I can reach, grasping the wires with my fingers, and pulling myself up without pausing, my intention to reach the top and hurl myself over before the electricity can immobilize and kill me. I’ve scrambled halfway up before it registers that I am not being shocked. The fence is still disabled. I am safe.
I cling to the wires and allow myself one second pause to catch my breath before continuing my climb. Once at the top, I sling one leg over and scramble down the other side, hunching in a ball at the base of the fence, hopeful that no one noticed my acrobatic climbing feat. I readjust my backpack, and then, keeping low, sprint to a grouping of cacti and crouch behind it.
I am an arrow-shot away from the closest fire, where I see Galena cradling her baby, Aniak, in the firelight. I cast my gaze around the camp, but there’s no sign of guards—I only see my people. My heart leaps to my throat as I allow myself to feel the excitement that has been building inside me.
I feel like whistling the notes that everyone will recognize . . . my return-from-the-hunt whistle that brings the children running to meet me. But I’m still not sure my people aren’t under some sort of surveillance, and don’t want to be captured before I have to. Whit knows I’m near and that I’m coming for my clan. But has he yet alerted Avery’s men to that fact?
Until he Reads that I’m here, I’m safe from him. Or until Avery’s guards notice that I incapacitated a section of the fence. The amount of time I have to strategize with my clan about how best to free Badger and escape depends on how quickly either of those events occurs. Every moment counts.