D. MacHale - SYLO

Granger stared at me with no emotion as I blathered on.

“We’ll talk again when you are in control of yourself,” he said. The light behind him went out and the room went black.

I slid down to the floor, crying and gasping for breath.

“Granger!” I screamed for no better reason than to let out my frustration.

I was back in the dark, in every way. I’ve heard about people “hitting bottom” and hoped I’d never have the experience. Lying there hurting, having lost my best friend and everything else to do with my life made me think the bottom was actually being hit because I couldn’t imagine anything lower.

I sat there for a few minutes, crying. Why not? I didn’t care who was watching or what they thought about me. I guess that’s what happens on the bottom. Once I let my emotions take over, my sorrow and self-pity were slowly replaced by another more powerful emotion. Anger. These people had come to my island and taken over our lives. What did any of us do to deserve that? Nothing. We were victims. We all were. Yet Quinn was executed. Yeah, I’ll use that word. Executed. We were in a war. We didn’t ask for it, yet we were in the middle of it. But who were we fighting? SYLO? That was just the Navy. The military needs orders and a mission. Did that come from Granger? He was calling the shots but it was dumb to think that he was solely responsible for the nightmare. He was taking orders too. But from whom? He had the backing of the president of the United States. Richard E. Neff. Was he the villain here? That was too much to get my head around. I had to stay focused on what I knew, and what I knew was Granger. He may not have been acting alone but he was in charge. Granger was the enemy.

That was something I could understand.

As I sat on the floor in that dark room, lost in rage and confusion and sorrow, I made a decision. I couldn’t just wish for the trouble to go away and for my life to return to normal. I couldn’t hope that my parents would tell me the truth and it would all make sense and somehow go away. That wasn’t going to happen…unless I made it happen. We were in a war. I had made a decision. I was going to fight. For me, for my old life, and for my best friend.

I promised myself that someday, somehow, Granger would pay for Quinn’s death. I owed my friend that much.

I don’t know how long I sat there in the dark. A couple of minutes? An hour? It was long enough to get back some control. I couldn’t let my emotions rule my actions. I had to be as cold as Granger. Every move I made had to be calculated while taking one step at a time—and I knew what that first step had to be….

I had to escape.

I had to make another Pemberwick Run.

A door opened, flooding the room with light. Standing there was a SYLO soldier with a pistol in a holster on his hip.

“Come with me,” he commanded and stepped back outside.

I struggled to my feet, fighting the pain of my bruises and the residual effect of whatever it was that had knocked me out. I saw that the wall I had run into was a mirror. A two-way mirror. Was Granger still watching me? I didn’t care. I staggered toward the door on stiff legs and stepped out into bright sunlight.

The dark room was actually a small stand-alone hut. It was one in a long line of similar prefab wooden huts with no windows that had been erected along the par-5 sixth fairway of the Oak Hills Golf Course. I wondered how many of the other huts were occupied by prisoners of SYLO…and if Tori might be one of them.

Looking out onto the fairway, I saw what looked like a pleasant fall afternoon. People were scattered everywhere. Some lay on their backs, soaking up the sun. A few jogged. A couple of elderly folks sat on benches, just staring into space. It could have passed for a typical day in a town park, except for the high chain-link fence topped off with a coil of razor wire that circled the perimeter.

This was the recreation yard of a prison.

Armed SYLO soldiers were stationed everywhere, silently watching the inmates.

“Follow me,” my escort said.

He led me along the row of huts toward the north end of the fairway. As we walked I stared out at the people, wondering why they were there. Had they crossed Granger too? Did they know too much, just like me? I saw no obvious link between any of them. There were older folks, both men and women, and some as young as me. I recognized a few people who lived on the island, but most were strangers. That wasn’t odd since so many off-islanders had stayed to enjoy the warmer-than-usual autumn and were trapped because of the quarantine. I guarantee they all wished they had cut their vacations shorter.

Everyone wore their own clothing. There was no “prison garb” that would have helped to complete the image of a prisoner-of-war camp. It was odd to see everyone dressed in casual vacation clothing like shorts and T-shirts and sandals. A few even wore tennis whites, as if they had been plucked off the courts. There was only one thing they all seemed to have in common: They were all alone. There were no couples talking or strolling. Nobody playing catch. No groups sharing conversation. From what I could tell, all of these people were on their own.

“Through here,” the soldier commanded as he opened up a gate in the fence.

I was about to step through when my eye caught something that froze me.

Kent Berringer was standing on the far side of the compound, staring at me. He must have been watching me walk the whole length of the fairway. I should have felt it sooner because the heat of his gaze was that intense. The last time I’d seen him, he was pissed, thinking I’d turned him and his parents in to SYLO for using the Ruby. I hadn’t, but that didn’t matter to him. He’d wanted to take my head off and from the look he was giving me, he still did. At least he was alive and looking somewhat normal. The effects of the Ruby were gone.

I didn’t wave to him or acknowledge his presence. Not because I wanted to continue our feud, but because Granger was so interested in our relationship. That couldn’t have been a random question he asked. I figured I had to be careful around Kent Berringer for all sorts of reasons.

The soldier led me through a narrow walkway between two fences until we were let through a gate on the far side and into another section of the SYLO base. What was once a driving range was now occupied by large, temporary structures that gave the area the feel of an instant city. The place was teeming with soldiers and civilians alike. When did all these people arrive? They must have been transported to the island from the naval ships at night.

The civilians all seemed to have purpose, hurrying between buildings. They wore red jumpsuits with a four-inch SYLO logo over their hearts. Most carried papers, clipboards, and tablet computers that they read while walking. It was a wonder that there weren’t any collisions. There were no smiles. No laughs. It was all tense and urgent. Everyone was busy; nobody seemed happy.

The soldiers weren’t as busy. They were watchful…and armed.

A truck was being unloaded that was stacked with large crates, all with the SYLO logo stenciled on the outside. It seemed like there was a steady flow of deliveries coming in from the mainland. There had to be. How else would the people of Pemberwick be fed? I watched as one large wooden crate was cracked open and saw that it contained smaller boxes with markings that indicated what each held. I saw: Wheat Cereal, Light Bulbs, Hand Soap, and Marshmallows. Marshmallows? Like it was important to bring in marshmallows to a prison camp? Whatever. The variety of stuff made it seem as though SYLO had been doing some damage at Walmart.

I was led into the one and only building that had been there before the occupation—the clubhouse. It was a big old white structure that had probably been around since the turn of the last century. It was a place where the wealthier residents of Pemberwick Island socialized, along with the type of visitors who stayed at the Blackbird Inn. The kind of people Tori hated. The place was all polished wood and overstuffed leather furniture with oil paintings of whaling ships on the walls and beautiful scale-model ships inside glass cases.