The Gender Lie(4)

Yet another reason I liked her. The pills Mr. Jenks had been developing could have helped her people immensely — but the pills were unstable, and might damage whoever took them. I knew she had toyed with the idea of having her own scientists try to fix the problems with the pills—she had told me as much—but I’d reminded her that anything that came from Mr. Jenks' research had been paid for in the blood of our loved ones, and she had taken that to heart, thanking me for reminding her about what was important.

I turned my attention to Owen as he explained, “These things are what helped me swing you through the trees using the vines. They’re grip enhancers.”

“Oh… Do I get a pair?” I asked.

Owen shook his head, a flash of regret crossing his face. “They are more dangerous than the suit. Quite commonly, you can get radial fractures in the bones of your arms if you’re not careful. We normally start training on them at a lower setting, and it’s not something we can move quickly through, like the suits. They take months to master. But don’t worry… I can carry you again if need be.”

He said this with a smile and a wink, but the thought of swinging through the vines again with his arm around my waist and the forest floor rushing up to meet us was too nauseating for me to register his good humor. I shuddered, shouldering my pack.

We slipped our masks over our faces and then stepped into the antechamber. Quinn closed the door behind us and twisted the handle, sealing us in. Amber pressed the button on the opposite door, and there came a soft hiss as the chamber began to filter in the toxic air from outside, equalizing the room.

After a few seconds, the light over the door flashed from red to green, and Solomon opened the door. Immediately, the sweltering heat from The Green filled the room, as did a little of the ever-present mist.

As we stepped outside into the toxic atmosphere, Solomon closed the door behind us. Owen consulted with his handheld before pointing out the direction. We began walking. Owen took point and Quinn the rear, and I was sandwiched between Amber and Solomon.

For the most part, we were quiet. It made sense—the dangers of The Green required caution at all times. I would never forget my own time here, and I reflected on how this felt different. For one thing, I had been completely alone at the start of my journey through The Green, and for another, I had been completely unprepared for it given that I had crash-landed here.

Now I felt confident, like I knew what I was doing, and I trusted Owen—and by default, the others—enough to know that they’d watch my back, just like I would watch theirs.

We moved slowly through the foliage. A few times Owen had signaled for us stop by bringing up a fist. Immediately, weapons were drawn. Solomon pulled out a stick that was strapped along his thigh—he clicked a button, and the stick morphed into that of a broad axe, the massive head resembling a half-moon.

Quinn and Amber had similar weapons—Quinn’s stick morphed into a spear that stood almost a foot taller than him, and Amber had a pair of short swords. Owen’s was short and fit in his palms, forming over his fisted knuckles into punch blades with four blades instead of two. While I simply had a gun.

Periodically, Owen would make us go invisible to avoid detection from the wildlife. For the most part though, we just walked.

We traveled for hours, the sun marching along with us in the morning, and then past us in the evening. Not that we got much sunlight in The Green—the canopy was too thick to let any light through, save a few rays that managed to push past the dense thicket of leaves.

Toward the evening, Owen had us spread out, and we began searching in a straight line, looking for prospective camping sites. It was ultimately Owen who found the perfect place against a massive boulder covered in green and brown moss. We sprayed it down—luckily no centipedes emerged from beneath—and fixed a simple roof using some of the polymorphic blankets we had brought.

Amber set up a light, and we all sat and ate in silence.

It was Quinn who broke it first. “Violet?”

I turned my head at his questioning tone, my hand on my mask, preparing to remove it to take another bite of my protein gel. “Yeah?”

Quinn leaned forward. “What happened to you when you were out here?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Quinn looked over at Amber, who looked at Solomon. There was a long pause before Solomon began speaking. “We heard you survived out here on your own for several days, with no suit,” he said, his dark eyes glittering with questions.

“But… people do that all the time, don’t they?”

The group collectively shook their heads. “No—because of our suits, we rarely encounter anything out here,” said Amber, an almost wistful quality to her voice.