A horn’s deep, baritone growl sounded from the closest watchtower, sweeping away the silence and making Minho’s jaw tremble from the brassy vibration rumbling through the air. His musings vanished, replaced with the alertness his training had mastered. He shifted his feet, bent his knees, knelt against the low wall of the parapet, his rifle locked into position on the top edge. Taking his breaths according to the litany of calm he’d been taught since the age of five, he peered into the distant, flat fields, waiting for what had prompted the warning from the watchtower.

Several minutes passed. Nothing but mud and dirt and rotted vegetation for miles.

Patience. No one had patience like the Orphans.

A figure appeared on the horizon. It approached rapidly, and it wasn’t long before Minho could see enough to know. A person, on a horse, galloping closer and closer. A man, dressed in rags, unarmed, hair blowing all over the place like a mad pit of skinny snakes. The man rode the horse in a beeline, coming directly toward the spot beneath Minho’s position. When the stranger came within a half kilometer, he slowed his animal to a trot, and then to a walk, and then stopped altogether, about eighty meters away. The man held his hands up, surely knowing the extreme weaponry that was aimed at him, and shouted.

“I’m not infected! I’ve been tested, quarantined myself for six months! No symptoms! Please! I swear it! I’ll stay here until you can see that I’m not sick!”

Minho listened to the man’s words, though they didn’t matter. They didn’t matter in the least. Like most everything else under the reign of the Remnant Nation, the outcome of this scenario had already been determined. The Flare was their devil, the Cure their God. He readied himself, knowing he didn’t have the courage to disobey protocol, not yet, not for a long time to come.

“Please!” the man pleaded. “I’m as clean—”

A single shot rang out, its fierce jolt of sound echoing in all directions.

The stranger, a small wisp of smoke leaking from the new hole in his head, slumped off the horse and fell into the mud with a wet splat. Another shot, and the animal fell as well.

Minho breathed in the smell of gunpowder, feeling pride at the accuracy of his aim. Feeling regret that it had been needed.

The Orphan stood back up, came to attention, positioned the rifle on his shoulder, as he had done faithfully for eleven years.

The Orphan had no name.

CHAPTER TWO

Field Trip

“Oh no you don’t.”