Taken (Erin Bowman)

Order team.”
    “Murder?” she spits. “It’s not murder when we’re fighting for our lives.” She looks at me carefully again, her eyes boring into mine.
    “Your name,” she grits through clenched teeth. I refuse to give it and instead begin to toy with her. This is when I know I’m more dehydrated than ever, more crazy than sane.
    “You were really good,” I admit. “All quiet like that. How long have you been following us?” She doesn’t answer. “You’d make a good hunter. Especially where I came from. I don’t think we had a single girl as stealthy as you.”
    “Where you came from?” she repeats. “Are you with the Order or are you from somewhere else?” She pushes the gun into my chest a bit harder this time. I keep my hands over my head, but I’m pretty certain that if she hasn’t shot me yet, she’s not going to.
    “What’s it matter? You are going to shoot me, right?” I flash her a quick smile. Devious. Playful.
    Her eyes narrow, and when she moves, she is impossibly quick. Her knee comes up and hits me in the groin. I buckle over in pain and she brings the butt of her weapon into my skull. I fall into the water and the last thing I see as I surrender to darkness is her proud face above me, smirking.

TWENTY-ONE
    WHEN I REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS, I am lying on a cot, in a room that appears to be a combination of wood and rock, as though someone tried to build a space that would fuse with the land. The blond girl stands with her back to me, talking to a man twice her age and nearly four times her size. He looks worried, his arms crossed atop his bulging stomach.
    “You shouldn’t have brought them back here, Bree,” the man says.
    “Luke, just look at them. Tell me you don’t see it and I’ll admit I’m wrong.”
    Luke says nothing.
    “And he said ‘where I came from.’”
    Still nothing.
    “And they’re twins.”
    “I don’t care,” Luke says, shaking his head. “They’re wearing Order uniforms. They’re a threat to us all.”
    “One of them is unconscious. Possibly in a coma due to a head injury.”
    “Even still.”
    “Owen should see them,” Bree retorts. “If he wants them dead, too, then fine. But I want to be sure.”
    “All right, but I’m getting Clipper first. He’s already dealt with the unconscious one, but I won’t have that boy here a moment longer until it’s out.” Luke eyes me suspiciously before leaving the room.
    “Who’s Clipper?” I ask, sitting up. The motion makes me dizzy.
    “He specializes in removing tracking devices,” Bree says. “Here. Have some water.” She hands me a crudely shaped cup, which I drink from anxiously.
    “Tracking devices?”
    “You do know where you are, don’t you?” she asks, hands on her hips.
    “Mount Martyr,” I say. I have to be. Bree is with the Rebels and she has brought me back to their headquarters. “Where’s my brother? I want to see him.”
    She sits on the edge of the bed. “What’s your name?” Her eyes lock with mine as if she could stare the answer out of me.
    “What’s yours?”
    “Bree.”
    “Nice to meet you.”
    She frowns. “I’d say likewise, but you still haven’t told me who you are.”
    “I know. And I don’t plan to.” I don’t trust her. She thought of shooting me, and Blaine, too, who was unconscious, as harmless as a fallen tree trunk.
    “You’ll tell us eventually,” she says. “We have ways of making people talk.”
    There is a knock on the door and a small boy walks in. He is a scrawny thing, with pinched eyes and large hands. He can’t be older than twelve or thirteen.
    “This is Clipper,” Bree says. “He’s going to terminate your tracking device now.” The boy smiles proudly.
    “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” I say.
    “Of course you don’t,” Bree sneers. “They likely said you needed some shots and pills and a haircut, called it a Cleansing. And then you woke up the next day with odd pains in your neck. They put a tracker in you.”
    I look at her blankly.
    “As long as you are breathing and the tracker is implanted, they will get an accurate reading of your location back in Taem,” she continues. “So what Clipper does is remove the device. Once he’s got it out of you, it will cease to work and the Franconian Order will lose their precious reading. In their eyes, you’ll be good as dead. I explained that right, didn’t I, Clipper?”
    “Sure did,” he announces.
    This is definitely for the best. If Frank