The marching lines stop. They are not so ordered now: Spingate startled them. They shift out of their lines, afraid, some suddenly holding each other.
“Spingate, you idiot,” I hear Aramovsky hiss from behind me. “Why did you do that?”
“They’re the same as us,” she answers. “We can all work together.”
The blond boy runs to the back of his lines, puts himself between us and his fellow marchers. He points the stick at us, and I see it ends in a wicked blade; it’s not a stick, it’s a spear.
He has a circle-star on his forehead.
He raises the spear high.
“Everyone, follow me!” he screams, then sprints toward us. Two of the marchers are right behind him, a boy and a girl, both with short, glossy black hair and caramel-colored skin. The rest of them don’t move; they stand in the hall, unsure of what to do.
My feet feel stuck to the floor. O’Malley tugs at my arm, urging me to run away, but I can’t move. The blond boy charges: he’s going to shove that spearpoint into my belly and I will wind up like Yong, on the floor, dead and cold and alone, crumbling away into dust.
I’m going to die and I haven’t even learned my first name.
The spear-wielding boy slows, stops a few steps from us. He’s looking at me, but down—I realize I’m holding the knife out, point first.
Even through my fear, I notice the shape of his face. He is beautiful in a way that is different from O’Malley; this boy is bigger, stronger, his shoulders and neck are thicker. There is a bruised bump on the right side of his heavy jaw.
All our clothes are too small for us, but the blond boy’s shirt is buttoned only at the waist; his broad chest stretches the fabric into a wide V. The sleeves are so tight I think his big arms might rip them apart at any moment. With even his smallest motion, I see muscles flutter beneath smooth skin.
He stands there. He had one strategy: charge. That didn’t work, and now he doesn’t know what to do.
Maybe I won’t die after all.
“Hello,” I say.
He blinks. “Uh…hello.”
I lower my knife to my side.
“I’m Savage,” I say. This time, that seems like the right name to use.
The boy sets the butt of the spear on the floor and angles the shaft back until the blade points straight to the ceiling. He looks at me like he doesn’t know what to make of me. He’s not angry, not suspicious…he’s more confused than anything else.
“You didn’t run,” he says.
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t. What’s your name?”
He pauses a moment, maybe waiting for me to change my mind, to suddenly turn and sprint away from him. When I don’t, he shrugs.
“I think my name is Bishop,” he says.
He thinks that’s his name? He doesn’t know any more than we do.
“R. Bishop,” he says. “That’s what was written on my cradle.”
“Cradle?”
The word makes me think of babies, even smaller than the little ones we saw in the other room.
He nods. “We were lying in them when we woke up.”
“Oh,” I say. “You mean the coffins.”
He stares at me, then smiles. “Coffins? That’s not very happy, now is it?”
I realize that he’s the only one in the hallway not wearing a red tie.
His eyes are a strange color: yellow, a bit darker than the curly blond hair matted to his head. His eyes catch the light, almost seem to glow.
That symbol on his forehead…he’s a circle-star, like Yong was. The two hard-eyed people behind him, the boy and the girl, are also circle-stars. Will they try to take over like Yong did? Will they hit people to get what they want?
Bishop looks past me, taking in the others. “Are there more of you?”
I almost say, There were six of us, then Yong’s dying face is all I can see.
“Just five,” I say, forcing the vision away. “There’s nineteen of you?”
He looks back down the hall, realizes that only two of his marchers came with him. He shakes his head in disgust.
“Depends on how you count,” he says. He leans close to me, speaks quietly. “Most of them aren’t worth much of anything, except for El-Saffani here.” He gestures to the boy and the girl.
They talk, the girl first, then the boy. “We are strong—”
“—stronger than the others—”
“—except for Bishop.”
Their eyes look exactly alike, dark-lined with heavy eyebrows and deep-brown irises. They are lean and firm, built for speed rather than pure strength. The boy is slightly taller than the girl. They both still seem ready to fight even though their leader is relaxed and smiling.
Two people, but he only said one name.
“Which one is El-Saffani?” I ask.
“They both are,” Bishop says. “That’s what was on their cradles, T. El-Saffani and T. El-Saffani.”
They’re twins.
Bishop’s eyes take in my clothes, twitch over to Spingate’s shirt, Bello’s lip, O’Malley’s cut.
“How did you all get so bloody? Was there a fight?”