They gave strange little bows, leaving their eight bewildered prisoners behind as they backed out of the room, shutting the door behind them.
Glass braced for the sound of a lock, and sure enough, there came the same telltale clank that’d haunted her all those terrible months in Confinement. The cruel irony produced a silent, grim laugh. She’d fled the dropship, scrambled through air ducts as a fugitive, spacewalked, and lost her mother in her struggle to make it down to Earth—and for what? Here she was, locked up again, separated from Luke by a distance much farther than the skybridge.
After the door clanked shut, the girls sitting stiffly on the mats seemed to relax slightly, rolling their ankles and rubbing their shoulders. There were more than two dozen of them in this “den,” all dressed in white dresses, their hair tied back severely in tight braids. The girl nearest her was sitting in an awkward position with her bare feet flat on the ground. And for some reason, she was scowling at Glass.
Glass tried a nervous smile. The girl didn’t return it.
“You should take off your shoes,” the girl snapped. “Our feet must touch Earth while we are in Her service.”
Two cots over, a pretty girl with curly dark hair sighed wearily. “Look down, Bethany. Does this look like Earth to you? We’re inside.”
Glass stared at her, startled. The girl’s accent wasn’t like any of the Earthborns’ or the Protectors’. It almost sounded like… but no, that was impossible…
But Octavia had caught it too. Her head whipped around, and she was staring at the girl, wide-eyed.
The curly-haired girl rested her feet on the mattress, in apparent violation of their “feet on the Earth” rules, and as she leaned back, the lantern light hit her face and Glass was sure she recognized her.
Glass grabbed Octavia’s arm, and they walked toward her quietly. “Are you from the Colony?” Glass whispered.
The girl stood up so fast she nearly knocked Glass over. “Your accent… are you a Phoenician?”
They stared at one another, dumbfounded. Finally, Glass spoke. “How is this possible? What’s your name? Where did you come from?”
“My name’s Anna. I was in a dropship that went off course. I’m not sure what happened, but we crashed far away.” She winced, and Glass briefly closed her eyes as memories of her own terrible crash came flashing back. “It was awful,” Anna continued hoarsely. “Eleven people died on impact, and a bunch more over the next few days. It’s funny. You spend your whole life being told that Earth is this paradise, and then it turns out to be one horrific nightmare after another. I wished I’d just stayed behind.”
“The ship was dying,” Glass said, flinching as she remembered the faces of people who realized they had nowhere to go as the air leaked out of the ships.
“I know. But at least I would’ve been with my family. There’s nothing for me here. I hate this planet,” she said bitterly.
“It’s not all so bad,” Glass said. A wistful note crept into her voice as she thought about walking through the woods with Luke, about waking up in his arms to the joyful trill of birdsong.
Octavia shifted closer to Anna. “So what happened after you crashed?” she asked curiously, the terror of her capture momentarily overshadowed by the strangeness of meeting a new Colonist.
“It was awful. No one could agree about what to do. We all wanted to find the rest of you, of course, but we didn’t know how to get there. In the end, we split up into smaller groups, which I realize now was dumb. Together, we might’ve had safety in numbers. But apart, it was easy for them”—she jerked her head toward the door—“to attack. I fought as hard as I could. I even knocked out a few of one guy’s teeth.”
Next to her, Octavia snickered and said, “Well done.”
“But it wasn’t enough to get away,” Anna continued. “They took me and a few of the boys I was with, and we’ve been here for the past few weeks.” She glanced around the room warily, as if afraid of being overheard. “So what happened to you?”
Glass’s stomach clenched. Had some of the boys from their camp been captured too? She prayed that Wells wasn’t among them.
She listened as Octavia gave Anna the short version of their story. Glass was slightly surprised by the animation in her voice. In her experience, Octavia had always been a little reserved around strangers, which made sense once Glass learned about the childhood spent in hiding, the adolescence in the ship’s care center, and the traumas she’d endured after landing on Earth.
In the dim light, Anna’s eyes grew wide as Octavia spoke. “You had cabins? And enough food for a feast? That’s amazing.”
“We used to have cabins,” Octavia said grimly. “These Protectors blew most of them up. Bellamy is probably losing his mind.”
“Bellamy?” Anna repeated. “Is that your boyfriend?” Was Glass imagining things, or was there a hint of disappointment in her voice?