Free The Resisters by Eric Nylund

changed … the Ch’zar got inside … and they had him.
    The real Coach Norman must have died that day.
    They took Ethan to the garage and guided him to a black bus. Ethan had never seen this particular bus before. Stenciled on the side of it in silver letters was: THE STERLING SCHOOL .
    Sterling
. The place was legendary. Notorious.
    It was where the criminals and antisocial types were sent. The troublemakers. Like Ethan Blackwood.
    There’d be no sports scholarship, no MIT, no learning from the best science teachers and one day becoming an astronaut. He felt a stab of regret.
    But those dreams had never been real.
    At least now he knew the truth … for all the good it did him.
    Officers Grace and Hendrix marched him onto the bus. There were no chains or shackles inside, as Ethan had expected. Instead, it was like any other bus he’d been on, with rows of side-by-side padded seats, overhead video monitors, and the faint scent of bubble gum.
    They gave Ethan a shove and indicated he should go all the way to the back.
    The seat belts weren’t the standard lap variety. They were five-point harnesses—probably designed to prevent the passengers—or rather the
prisoners
—from escaping.
    Ethan couldn’t be here. He had to get off this bus. Now! It’d be his last chance to escape.
    He stopped and tried to turn—but the police grabbed him and forced him into a seat.
    Ethan struggled and screamed.
    The two officers were strong and seemingly impervious to his punches and kicks.
    They wrestled him into a window seat and snapped his harness in place.
    “You’ll see this is all for the best,” Officer Grace told him.
    “Just relax, boy,” Officer Hendrix soothed. “It’ll be easier.”
    “I bet it’ll be easier,” Ethan said, “for you!”
    He wriggled and strained, clutched at the release button on his safety harness—but, of course, it didn’t work.
    The police officers looked at each other and shook their heads, as if Ethan was a terrible disappointment. They got off the bus.
    The folding doors sealed with a swish, and the bus on full autopilot pulled out of the garage.
    It cruised through his neighborhood and turned onto Main Street. Was this the last time Ethan would see his home? There was the drugstore on the corner where he and Emma went to listen to the mystery radio shows every Saturday afternoon. Looking over the downtown rooftops, he thought he caught a glimpse of blue and white—the peak of his house.
    Ethan hugged his stomach and felt like he was going to be sick.
    Were his parents like Coach Norman? Part of the alien Collective? Had they ever loved him? Or was that an act?
    No. Franklin and Melinda Blackwood
were
different.Everyone had always said so. Hadn’t they taught him and Emma to think for themselves? That didn’t seem to fit into being a good citizen of the Collective.
    And what had they told him at breakfast?
    We’ve done everything we could to get you and Emma ready. We don’t know how this will end. If it goes bad … then you can’t know
.
    Which made sense only if his parents
weren’t
controlled by the aliens—and they’d been trying to hide that from him! They’d have had to, because if Ethan got absorbed into the Collective … then the Ch’zar would know everything he did.
    Maybe his parents were secret Resistance spies. They were just waiting for the right moment to rescue him before he changed into a mind-controlled zombie.
    His heart sank. Did that now mean the Ch’zar, when they absorbed Ethan’s mind, would suspect his parents as well because he did? Had he blown it for them?
    Ethan strained against his harness, looking out every window, waiting to catch a glimpse of his family’s station wagon racing down the street after the bus.
    But that didn’t happen.
    The bus turned off Main Street. Straight ahead was the Geo-Transit Tunnel that had a four-lane road and railroad tracks—the only way into and out of the mountain valley that held Santa Blanca.
    It