The Rains (Untitled #1)(77)

I couldn’t take it all in at once; it was too overwhelming. I did my best to make sense of it, to assemble it in my mind piece by piece.

To the side of the cannery, several acres of forest had been cleared and a giant foundation poured for future construction. Before the Dusting the factory had evidently been in the process of a huge expansion. That explained all the supplies stashed around the area. The new foundation was enormous, three or four times the size of the original cannery.

Cratering the corner of the foundation was a massive meteor, cracked jaggedly open around the midpoint. But the inside didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen.

It was smooth and perfectly rounded, coated with transparent screens that seemed as if they were made of organic matter like the eye membranes of the Hosts. Various images flashed on the screens, though I could make out little more than shifting bluish lights.

It wasn’t just a meteor. It had been co-opted as a spaceship.

Thump. Squelch.

My attention was drawn to where the assembly belt emerged from that roughly cut hatch in the cannery wall. A twenty-foot length of the belt had been reassembled outside so the assembly line could continue to the edge of the new foundation.

Thump. Squelch.

My gaze landed at the spot where the belt ended.

A figure stood there at the receiving end like some kind of high priestess from ancient times. Something about her posture and contours suggested she was female. Everything about her was futuristic, from the sleek black suit to the polished helmet with its dark-tinted sheet of a face mask. No flesh was visible; she was completely sealed in seamless armor, which looked like an astronaut suit from another millennium.

I stared at the perfectly smooth protective suit, shaped like a human. It seemed to be airtight. No gaps between gloves and sleeves. No break at the neckline below the helmet. Just one flexible cover adhering to the shape as if poured on, unbroken from torso to waist to boots.

Was there a human beneath it? An eyeless Host? Or was this another creature altogether, shaped like one of us? Her movements inside the suit were oddly fluid and robotic at the same time. Like the eye membranes, the suit seemed to be formed from some sort of biological technology.

The next kid lurched into place before her, strapped to the belt, bared sacrificially. It was Andre Swisher, the track star we’d seen snatched by Chasers in the town square. Even from where I was, I could hear Andre’s weeping. The black sheet of the helmet’s face guard reflected back his terrified expression.

The figure smacked a sleek glove to Andre’s chest, pinning him in place.

Thump.

And she lifted the other arm.

Which didn’t look like an arm at all.

It looked like a giant stinger, tapering to a point rather than a hand. The end had numerous small bumps on it, and it squirmed around like a tentacle. Its sharp tip had a hole in it, like an enormous, living needle.

The stinger shot down as if of its own accord, burying itself in Andre’s belly and rooting around.

Squelch.

I watched Andre’s eyes go white. He rattled on the assembly belt, but the straps kept him from moving much. It looked like he was having a seizure.

Then he stilled.

Several Hosts released the straps from Andre’s body and tossed them into a big crate brimming with them. Another Host carried the crate back into the building to the beginning of the assembly belt so the straps could be recycled, used on a fresh lot of kids.

For a moment Andre lay atop the edge of the assembly belt.

The figure removed the stinger from his belly, the end squirming again, those sensory bumps wiggling.

Then something even more impossible happened.

The figure pulled over a rectangle of sheet metal to the edge of the assembly belt.

But it wasn’t connected to anything. It floated in the air like a blow-up raft in a swimming pool. With a faint touch, the figure guided it across, lining it up so it served as an extension of the belt. When the belt lurched forward again, the tread rolled Andre onto the floating slab of sheet metal, clearing the way for the next bound child to slide into place beneath the writhing stinger.

With her gloved hand, the figure gently pushed the slab away, and it glided across toward the far side of the foundation. I followed it into the last sheets of morning mist, and what I saw there made me cover my mouth so I wouldn’t gasp.

Andre’s slab joined an army of others arranged in neat rows. Hundreds of kids lying motionless on their backs, hovering above the ground on their slabs.

Most of them showed bulges in their stomachs. The closest ones looked bloated. But as I peered into the far reaches of the concrete plain, I saw that the farther away the kids were, the more pronounced the bulges were. At the far edge, the boys and girls showed humps protruding almost a foot, filling the space between their waists and their chests. I noticed now that these kids and the others strapped to the assembly line all looked older—at least twelve years old. Where were the younger kids? Being fed at some other center, aged up like cattle?

Making the rounds through this perverted harvest were several more figures wearing seamless space suits like the high priestess, but they were shorter and more muscle-bound. Males? Parading around on autopilot, bent to a single task, they reminded me of drone insects. Their suits were black as well, though less shiny than the female’s armor.

I had to remind myself to breathe. I was confronting odds so impossible I couldn’t even imagine a version of success. Even if Alex weren’t already lost and even if I could spot her, it would be impossible to sneak into the compound, dodge the Hosts and Drones, free her, and get out.