Unity by Jeremy Robinson

the end, I had nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Like a spaceship trying to fly through the center of a black hole, I was lost. I was nothing. And everyone watching was about to see it.
    Then a hand locked onto my wrist and a voice said, “I got you.”
    I didn’t look up. Couldn’t. I put all of my energy into locking my hand around my rescuer’s wrist and held on while the last few feet were completed by someone else. In my eyes, I had failed. So when I saw that it was Hutch who had pulled me up, this boy who followed me everywhere and whose apparent affection felt like a foreign invader, I reacted like Mandi. I didn’t thank him. Instead, I shouted, “Just stay away from me!” and stormed off. I never did apologize.
     
     
    “You all right?”
    The question pulls me back to the present. Mandi is leaning in front of me, looking concerned.
    “Not really,” I say. “There’s nothing right about this.”
    “Guys!” It’s Daniel again. I start toward him, fully intent on chewing him out for swallowing a megaphone. But then he says, grinning, “We found something!” and I find myself jogging toward him, foolish enough to get my hopes up.

11
     
    My hopes aren’t exactly dashed when I see what has Daniel worked up, but it kind of feels like an elephant took a big steaming dump on them.
    “It’s a path,” he says, like we can’t see that for ourselves.
    The winding line of hard-packed earth leads through the grass, where it’s partially concealed by shifting reeds. It leads into the jungle at the valley’s end. It’s not a call box, homing beacon or other modern device portending rescue, but it is a sign of civilization.
    The question is, who made it? Unity? Or the people who killed Unity kids? It might lead us right to them. Pigs in a slaughter house, walking naively to the bolt gun, putting it against our own foreheads. Suicidal lemming pigs.
    Gwen’s sour expression means she’s thinking the same thing. Or something similar. Some other non-swine analogy. Of course, she’s the farm girl, so her vision of slaughtered pigs is probably more graphic and better informed.
    Daniel is surprised by our lack of excitement, or maybe he expects us to be clucking proud. That’s how I picture his mother, gasping at all his accomplishments, pinching his cheeks. That’s what good mothers do, isn’t it?
    Daniel hops down from the landing pad and crouches beside the path. He scratches at its surface, which flakes but remains mostly intact. “It’s been packed down hard. The rain didn’t turn it to mush. Not all of it, anyway. And look...” He digs a blade of still-green grass out of the surface. “This grass is still alive. The path is new. It was made by a machine. Probably within the last few days.”
    “We don’t know who made it, or where it goes,” I point out.
    “It’s a newly made path leading away from a Unity landing pad, where we were most likely meant to land.” Daniel stands, looking frustrated with me. He’s not used to having his opinions questioned, and he’s clinging to hope.
    Like me.
    Like all of us.
    “So we follow the path,” I say. “And then what?”
    He shrugs. “Beats me.”
    “That’s your job,” Mandi says. There’s a snippy attitude in her voice I’d like to slap out of her, but when no one comes to my defense, I realize that’s how they all feel. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been with the Unity program for just three weeks, or that I’m uninitiated and uncomfortable with the roles of Base, Support and Point. When they look at me, all they see is a black triangle with a red tip.
    A Point.
    The tip of a spear.
    A weapon.
    A leader.
    All I see is a tattoo I never asked for, and had I known the implications, I would have turned them down.
    But I’m not sure that’s entirely true, either. The alternative to this would have been Brook Meadow. Without Sig to keep me grounded, I would have most likely been kicked out of school by now. And that would have been it for