The Extinction Trials(66)

Before she drifted off to sleep, Maya tried to think back to the last thing she could remember. It was seeing the man go out of the airlock and die. But she knew there were things before that. What were they? It was like the timeline of her memories were moving up. How long did she have? How long before she had forgotten who Cara and Blair were? Or Owen. Or what she was doing out here?





Maya woke to voices arguing: Cara and Will.

Maya glanced over in time to see the doctor pulling back the blanket covering Will, revealing the glowing panel of the radio. He didn’t say a word, only stalked off into the dark forest, Cara close behind him, whispering.

Maya wanted to get up and go after them, but sleep held her down.

She felt wetness on her upper lip and reached up to find blood there. Her head swam and sleep overtook her again.





When Maya woke again, Blair was tucked in beside her, sound asleep. Cara and Will were still gone. Owen was softly snoring.

Alister was awake, his back turned to her as he stared down at his forearm. Maya was at just enough of an angle to realize that there was indeed a tattoo on his arm. Owen had been right. Alister reached down and touched the tattoo, pressing his finger in, stretching the skin and distorting it. Maya’s sleep-addled brain was so sluggish she could barely comprehend what she was seeing. She closed her eyes and found she couldn’t lift her eyelids again.

The next thing she heard was Cara’s voice shouting in the distance, seeming not to care who heard her. “We have to respond!”

That brought Maya around. Quickly, she surveyed the camp, which was now just a pile of blankets around the duffel bags. Everyone was gone except for her and Blair. They had moved deeper into the woods, perhaps to ensure their voices didn’t wake her.

“Respond to what?” Owen asked. Maya heard his voice but couldn’t see him through the thick trees and morning fog.

She pushed up and stumbled through the forest and uneven terrain to a small clearing where she found Alister, Will, Owen and Cara standing around the radio on the ground.

Alister had put his sweater back on and was shaking his head. “Absolutely not!”

“What’s happening?” Maya asked.

“We’ve received a transmission,” Will said.

“From whom?”

“It’s probably static,” Alister said.

Will bent down to the radio and tapped the display panel. “It’s not static.”

A tapping emanated from the speaker—a rhythmic beating that stopped with a long beep then continued. Four taps. A short beep. Seven taps. A long beat.

“Forty-seven,” Maya whispered. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a short-wave broadcast,” Will said.

“But what does it mean?” Maya asked.

Alister threw up his hands. “Nothing. It means nothing. Forty-seven. So what?”

“It’s not nothing,” Cara said.

Alister scoffed. “Then what is it?”

Cara stared at him. “It’s a numbers station. Broadcasting a challenge. And we need to reply.”





Chapter Fifty-Two





Morning light filtered through the tall trees, and for a long moment, everyone was silent. The only sound was the tapping and beeps from the radio.

“How do you know it’s a numbers station?” Alister asked Cara.

“It’s obvious,” she said as she turned to Will. “We need to reply, right now.”

“With what?” Will asked.

“The Garden coordinates.”

Will cocked his head. “Why?”

“Why not?” Cara snapped.

“That doesn’t seem to help us.” Will paused. “I assumed we would reply with forty-seven, a standard response to acknowledge receipt. Or perhaps forty-eight, to indicate progression.”

“That doesn’t help us either,” Cara said. “It would only reveal our presence—and location, assuming the broadcast can be triangulated. We need to send the Garden coordinates.”

Will squinted at her. “That would still reveal our location—if the broadcaster has that capability.”

“True, but it would also help whoever is broadcasting.”

Owen studied their faces and their body language, willing his mind to make sense of what was happening. He once again felt as he had in Station 17, in the observation room when the group had first met—when the older man had destroyed Bryce after moving the people into place like chess pieces. To Owen, this situation felt the same, but he couldn’t see the board, couldn’t discern the objective and how the players were moving. He sensed that both Cara and Will knew something they weren’t revealing, but the clues to whatever it was remained invisible to him.

“Both are horrible ideas!” Alister roared. “There’s nothing at the Garden Station location, and giving away our position and waiting will get us killed.”

“We don’t know that,” Will said.

“Look at what happened to those poor saps from the journal,” Alister shot back.

“We could broadcast and keep moving,” Will said. “We send forty-seven and see what comes back—that will likely reveal whether the numbers station is run by someone friendly to us.”