forged on, feeling stronger. I was going to make it! I thought about returning home. Dad would be so freaked. He’d get a job in town and never leave home again. We’d work together to expose this place. My brain would recover from whatever these people had done to it.
My head had stopped pounding. The ringing in my ears was totally gone.
Unfortunately, so was the sea smell.
I stopped. I hadn’t been paying attention. I sniffed left and right. I sniffed until I had to sneeze. But I had lost the scent. Completely.
I thought of retracing my steps, but they’d vanished in the underbrush. Looking desperately around, I saw a gap between trees. Animal droppings. The possibility of a path. In the distance I thought I could see a tiny, bright glint. The reflection of the sun against water?
My heart raced. I hurried toward it, thrashing through the thick brush.
And then something fell from the sky.
“EEEEEEEEEEE!” With a piercing scream, it hurtled into my path. I sprang backward. As it leaped toward me, I could see a set of knifelike teeth and bright red gums.
A monkey landed on all fours and stood chattering angrily. In one hand it held some half-eaten fruit. In the other it was jangling something metallic.
A set of keys.
I rubbed my eyes. I was seeing things.
The monkey didn’t seem to want to attack. Instead it turned its back and walked into the woods. I watched it go, feeling as if my beating heart would burst out of my chest. Just as I’d gathered myself, the monkey popped out again, scolding me. Waving into the jungle.
“You…you want me to follow you?” I said.
“EEEEEEEEE!”
I took that for a yes.
I tried to obey, but the thing was much slipperier than I was. It would disappear into the brush and then emerge exasperatedly with its hands on its little hips. Ahead, I saw the bright glow of a clearing—and the glint again. We were approaching it from a different angle. It wasn’t water. It was something in the middle of a jungle clearing, something metallic or glass.
I picked up the pace, sweeping away thatches of thorny vines. And then I saw it.
A helicopter.
I figured it had crashed long ago, a relic from some war. But as I neared, I saw it looked new and was standing intact. The words KARAI INSTITUTE were emblazoned on the side in purple letters.
KI—the same initials that were stamped on my shirt and the banner in my room. I had no idea what Karai meant. But “institute”? You didn’t call a hospital an institute. Some kind of laboratory, maybe. A place where smart people got together to have smart ideas. What was I doing there? Was I some kind of specimen?
I approached warily. The monkey had dropped the keys on the ground by the helicopter’s door and was jumping around, hysterically excited.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Fly it?”
The monkey clapped its hands and danced.
The only chopper I’d flown was in a video game. I escaped in order to get help, not get myself killed. Maybe there’d be something inside that could help—a map, a radio, a GPS device. Limping forward, I picked up the keys. “Thanks, bud. If I get out alive, I’m sending you bananas.”
I grabbed the handle by the helicopter door and pulled myself up. Standing on the platform, I carefully pulled the door open.
And I nearly fell back onto the ground.
In the driver’s seat was an enormous man in a short-sleeved shirt. His legs were crossed, revealing the thick, blackened sole of a bare foot. His arm showed a tattoo of the letters KI, made of intertwined snakes. As he turned with a sigh, a pair of steely green eyes peered out from a familiar, scarred face.
I said the only words my brain would allow. “I know you.”
Red Beard grabbed me by the arm and pulled me upward. With his other hand, he swiped the keys from my grip.
“Next time,” he said, “I shoot that chimp.”
YODA IN TWEEDS
I DIDN’T STAND a chance. Red Beard’s hands were like steel bands. He hefted me up into the chopper in one effortless swoop. The movement was so jarring and such a shock to my fragile system that I blacked out.
When I came to, we were rising high above the jungle to a chorus of simian screeches. I tried opening my eyes but even the light hurt. My brain felt as if someone had pumped it full of air.
“Seat belt,” the man grunted.
The chopper’s blades were deafening. I was going back. Back to the institute. Taken by the same man who had injected me with who knows what while he posed as a priest. He had walked past my house on bare feet. Now he was wearing earphones, moving the controls and humming tunelessly to himself. His eyes were bloodshot, his face haggard.
I tugged on his shirt to get his attention. “Take me home!”
“Hunh?” He turned, a little startled, as if he’d already forgotten I was there. Pulling off the left side of his earphones, he said, “Can’t. Got to go back. Seat belt!”
My sight was slowly clearing, the pain in my head subsiding. What was he doing here—in the middle of a jungle? What had he been doing in front of my house…at the hospital?
What was going on?
“You…you injected me…” I said.
He shrugged. “Job.”
“Why?” I said. “Why do you want me?”
“Do what I’m told,” he replied.
“What’s the Karai Institute?” I pressed.
“Bosses,” he said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.
I gazed out the window. Off to one side, the mountain was like a black wound. In the distance, the sea stretched out in a silvery sheet. I could see where the helicopter had been waiting. The spot was surrounded by acres and acres of jungle. What were the chances I’d walk right to it?
“So…you were just waiting at some random place in the middle of the jungle?” I asked. “What if I didn’t show up?”
The man’s face darkened. “Blasted monkey thief!” He pulled down his arm angrily and the chopper swooped. “Stole keys!”
My
