Deception by Teri Terry

Author:Teri Terry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Published: 2019-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

CALLIE

“I THOUGHT TO START THINGS OFF we should tell you who we are, and how we came to be together here. Out loud, everyone,” Patrick says, and nods at Kai. It’d been weird at dinner, like they had to keep reminding themselves Kai couldn’t hear what everyone said if it wasn’t out loud, given that everyone—even JJ, when pressed by Patrick—promised not to venture into his head.

“Zohra, do you want to start?” Patrick says.

“Yes. Well, I’m rather good at finding survivors—sensing them. It was me who first noticed you walking up the road today. Before we came here, I’d been hiding in plain sight, as it were, but I was scared. Lonely. Afraid to tell anyone what I was, even though it was obvious I wasn’t a carrier—no one ever got sick around me. But I think I needed to talk to someone like myself to understand what had happened to me. So I started trying to find others like me.”

Freja nods; she understands. She’s been by turns nervous of this group, like Kai, and ecstatic to have found people like her. I mean they’re different from each other in all the ways that people can be—accent, age, skin color—but with this one overriding thing in common. They’re survivors like her, like me.

Or like I used to be.

“First I found Henry,” Zohra says. She smiles at the boy—he’s maybe a few years younger than Freja and has been staring at her with rapt attention all through dinner. “And he knew about Amaya—they’re friends from school. We were all out in the community, passing ourselves off as immune. But then they started testing people that were immune with some scan, and we were scared we’d be caught. There were rumors of survivors being taken away to some research place, and who knows what would happen to us there?”

Kai winces, and I’m guessing we are sharing the same thought: was Shay taken there? She might know the answer.

“Anyhow, we decided to disappear,” Zohra says. “But we were being tracked. We nearly got caught, but JJ found us and helped us get away—he’s rather good at blocking, so I didn’t sense him. It’s mostly JJ that’s put a block over this place—even though Callie still found it.”

It was hard, though, I answer, still marveling at this: communicating with a whole roomful of people. Not just through Shay or Freja. Everyone in this room hears me, acknowledges me—except Kai, of course.

“I’d been monitoring Zohra for a while,” JJ says. “They weren’t very good at hiding, and worse at defending themselves. I’d retreated here already. I’d already seen Freja’s channel online at this point and told her how to find the road.”

“And Patrick?” Kai asks.

“I was online telling everyone survivors aren’t carriers, like Freja was, but anonymously and not as visibly perhaps. JJ gave me hints how to find them here; I was the last to come. I don’t stay here all the time. I’m still officially living at home—I’ve got a place on

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