Chapter 10: Forty Minutes

We were on the road in four minutes.

Sable drove. Brand and two of the crew rode in the back with rifles.

"Who are they?" I asked.

"Brother and sister off the east row," Sable said. "Ten and eight."

"The boy's been asking all week if the Haven girl's right about the sky."

My stomach turned over.

"He wanted to see the shield up close," she said. "That's all. He's ten."

The highway was black. The Gate came up out of it at the end.

A mile out, Brand banged on the roof. Sable killed the lights and stopped.

He dropped off the flatbed and crouched in the road, reading the dust.

"Here," he said. "They left the road. Down the ditch side."

We followed on foot.

Twenty yards short of the Gate tower floodlights, we heard the crying.

The boy was flat in the roadside ditch with his leg caught in a steel cable.

A Registry snare. Bolted to a post, with a black box on it and a red light.

His little sister was holding his hand, and she wouldn't let go.

They both had scales, his on his cheek, hers down one arm.

For a second I couldn't breathe.

The same ditch. The same road. A child with scales in the water.

Brand's hand closed on my shoulder, hard.

"Ember. Look at me. Can you open it?"

I looked at the box.

A Registry stray snare. Coded lock. I'd seen the schematics in second year.

"Yes," I said. "Ten minutes. Maybe more."

The floodlights on the Gate tower swung toward us.

A siren whooped.

A Registry patrol truck came round the tower with its spotlight on, and two collars jumped off the back with shock prods.

"Strays!" one of them yelled. "Back off the snare!"

Brand pulled his shirt over his head and threw it at Sable.

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