We hurried up over the hill and down the other side, right up to the fence, keeping the shed between us and the rest of the compound. We crouched in the shadows at the base of the fence.
“Can you tell what kind it is?” I asked Claudia.
“It doesn’t look electrified,” she replied. “But I can’t tell if it is a smart fence or not. It might be something new.” She turned to Ogden. “What do you think?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t look like any smart fence I’ve seen. I think it’s just an old-fashioned chain-link.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters.
As he moved to place them over one of the fence wires, Claudia put her hand on his, stopping him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said. “Are you sure? If that’s a smart fence and you snip it, they’ll be all over us in minutes.”
He grinned. “If it was a decent smart fence, they’d be here already from the heat and motion sensors.”
Then another voice said, “Hey, who are you?”
We jumped at the sound and looked up to see a slight, shadowy outline, a young guy who looked like he had a bird splice. His eyes were large and far apart, like an owl, and he seemed to move easily through the darkness. He was carrying two bulging trash bags.
“We’re here to save you,” Ogden said without hesitating.
“To save me?” the guy laughed. “Awesome! Save me from what?”
“From this place,” Ogden said, standing and stepping closer to the fence. “We’re going to get reinforcements and break you out. You and the others.” He peered over the kid’s shoulder. “How many others are there?”
The kid put down the bags and looked behind him. “There’s about twenty, twenty-five of us, I guess. But what do you mean ‘break us out’? I mean, I’d love to get the hell out of here, but would we still get paid?”
“Paid?” I said, stepping up to the fence, as well. “You’re getting paid?”
He studied me in the darkness. “Wait a second, are you from corporate?”
I realized he was suspicious because I wasn’t a chimera. “No,” I said. “We’re not from corporate.”
“Okay.” Then he laughed. “And of course we get paid. Jeez, you think I’d be lugging these around for fun?”
I looked at Ogden, but he ignored me. “We were told chimeras were being held here,” he said. “Against their will. Like prisoners.”
He shrugged. “Well, kind of, I guess. You sign an eight-week contract, you’re not allowed to leave until it’s done, but you know how it is these days. Just glad to have a job. Even at a crazy place like this.”
“Crazy how?” Ogden asked.
He stepped closer to the fence. “All sorts of crazy,” he said, lowering his voice. “I mean, I don’t know what they’re up to, but this place is weird.”
Ogden glanced at me as if he felt vindicated. Maybe there was something here after all. “In what way?” he asked.
The kid looked behind him, then looked back. He raised the trash bags. “Look, I need to dispose of these and get back or I’m going to get in trouble.” He nodded at me. “You’re sure she’s not from corporate, right? This isn’t some kind of trick?”
“Are you kidding?” I laughed. “I’m seventeen years old.”
“We’re just here to make sure you’re all okay,” said Ogden. “To help.”
The kid nodded. “Okay, well look, I’m about to get off, and then I’ll be at The Dive, if you want to talk.”
“The Dive?” I said. “Where’s that?”
He smiled. “That’s just what we call it. There’s a power farm on the eastern side of the property, two fields of panels.”
Ogden nodded. “We saw it.”
“Between the two fields, kind of underneath the panels, there’s an old barn. We sneak through the inner fence and hang out there sometimes.” He opened a door in the shed. “I can meet you there in twenty minutes.”
As he turned away from us, Claudia asked, “What’s in the bag?”
“Dead chickens,” he said, shaking his head. “We go through a lot of dead chickens.”
TWENTY
The Dive wasn’t far from where we were, or where we had come in, but between the darkness and the rolling terrain, it took fifteen minutes to get there. The sky was now dark except for the stars. Walking between the puddles reflecting the sky, seeing the stars below our feet, I felt a mild sense of vertigo that was only slightly eased as each step sent ripples across the nearby water.
I was just getting used to the sensation when we entered the power farm itself, row after row of solar panels. The barn soon appeared ahead of us—a low, slouching lump of shadow on a dirt road that had been invisible until we stepped onto it. To our left, the road led to the outer fence, and to our right it slanted across the solar farm into the distance.
We had to circle the barn once to find the door. When we opened it, Claudia turned on her flashlight and swept the interior, revealing a couple of crates around a makeshift table made from planks and cinderblocks.
“I know it’s not much to look at but, well, it’s not much to look at,” said a voice behind us. We turned to see the kid from before, smiling and flanked by two others. They also had bird splices. “I’m Earl,” he said. “This is Melanie and Hitchcock.”
Ogden introduced himself, then so did Claudia and I.
Earl nodded for a moment, then edged past us through the open door of the barn and said, “Come on in.”
He pulled a string inside the door, illuminating the interior of the barn with a dull orange glow. I saw that Melanie was carrying a sack, similar to the ones Earl had been carrying before, but not as full.
“So, you told Earl you’re here to help us,” Melanie said. “Who are you?”
“And how did you get in?” Hitchcock added.
“We cut through the fence,” Ogden said. “We’re from CLAD.”
“CLAD? So, what, are you going to blow the place up?” Earl said, prompting the other two to laugh.
Hitchcock cackled. “Please! Not until after I get paid!”
“Some of us are from CLAD,” I said. “But we’re all concerned with what’s going on here.” I looked at each of them. “So…what is going on here?”
Melanie put the bag on the floor and opened it to reveal a chicken carcass. “Chickens,” she said. “Sick chickens. And lots of them.”
Claudia wrinkled up her face in disgust. I might have done the same.
“Chickens?” Ogden said, cocking his head as if to ask if there was more to that story.
“Yeah. Lots of them,” Earl said. “They have us in there feeding them, watering them, cleaning up. They pay us okay, or they will, but it’s not pleasant work.”
“It’s depressing as hell,” said Hitchcock.
“Because of the conditions?” I asked.
“And because the birds be dying all the time,” he replied. “It’s sad.”
Melanie nodded in agreement. “It is. And it’s weird because we take pretty good care of them, and we monitor their health closely.”