by Tahereh Mafi
And only then—
Only when I’m certain I’ve killed some small part of my own self do I finally collapse.
I’m choking, coughing up blood, my chest heaving from the effort expended. The room swims. Swings around.
I press my forehead to the cold floor and fight back a wave of nausea. And then I feel a familiar, heavy hand against my back. With excruciating slowness, I manage to lift my head.
A blur of gold appears, disappears before me.
I blink once, twice, and try to push up with my arms but a sharp, searing pain in my wrist nearly blinds me. I look down, examining the strange, hazy sight. I blink again. Ten times more.
Finally, my eyes focus.
The skin inside my right arm has split open. Blood is smeared across my skin, dripping on the floor. From within the fresh wound, a single blue light pulses from a steel, circular body, the edges of which push up against my torn flesh.
With one final effort, I rip the flashing mechanism from my arm, the last vestige of this monster. It drops from my shaking fingers, clatters to the floor.
And this time, when I look up, I see his face.
“Aaron,” I gasp.
He drops to his knees.
He pulls my bleeding body into his arms and I break, I break apart, sobs cracking open my chest. I cry until the pain spirals and peaks, I cry until my head throbs and my eyes swell. I cry, pressing my face against his neck, my fingers digging into his back, desperate for purchase. Proof.
He holds me, silent and steady, gathering my blood and bones against his body even as the tears recede, even when I begin to tremble. He holds me tight as my body shakes, holds me close when the tears start anew, holds me in his arms and strokes my hair and tells me that everything, everything is going to be okay.
KENJI
I was assigned to keep watch outside this door, which, initially, was supposed to be a good thing—assisting in the rescue mission, et cetera—but the longer I wait out here, guarding Nazeera while she hacks the computers keeping the supreme kids in some freaky state of hypersleep, the more things go wrong.
This place is falling apart.
Literally.
The lights in the ceiling are beginning to spark and sputter, the massive staircases are beginning to groan. The huge windows lining either side of this fifty-story building are beginning to crack.
Doctors are running, screaming. Alarms are flashing like crazy, sirens blaring. Some robotic voice is announcing a crisis over the speakers like it’s the most casual thing in the world.
I have no idea what’s happening right now, though if I had to guess, I’d say it had something to do with Emmaline. But I just have to stand here, bracing myself against the door so as not to be accidentally trampled, and wait for whatever is happening to come to an end. The problem is, I don’t know if it’s going to be a happy ending or a sad one—
For anyone.
I haven’t heard anything from Warner since we split up, and I’m trying really, really hard not to think about it. I’m choosing to focus, instead, on the positive things that happened today, like the fact that we managed to kill three supreme commanders—four if you count Evie—and that Nazeera’s genius hacking work was a success, because without her, there’s no way we’d have made much headway at all.
After our sojourn through the vents, Warner and I managed to drop down into the heart of the compound, undetected. It was easier to avoid the cameras once we were in the center of things; the rooms were closer together, and though the higher security areas have more security access points—some of them have fewer cameras. So as long as we avoided certain angles, the cameras didn’t notice us, and with the fake clearance Nazeera built for us, we got through easily. It was because of her that we were in the right place—after having unintentionally killed a super-important scientist—when all the supreme commanders began to swarm.
It was because of her that we were able to take out Ibrahim and Anderson. And it was because of her that Warner is locked up with Robo J somewhere. Honestly, I don’t even know how to feel about it all. I haven’t really allowed myself to think about the fact that J might never come back, that I might never see my best friend again. If I think about it too much, I start feeling like I can’t breathe, and I can’t afford to stop breathing right now. Not yet.
So I try not to think about it.
But Warner—
Warner is either going to come out of this alive and happy, or dead doing something he believed in.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
The problem is, I haven’t seen him in over an hour, and I have no idea what that means. It could either be really good news or really, really bad. He never shared his plan with me—surprise surprise—so I don’t even know exactly what he’d planned to do to once he got her alone. And even though I know better than to doubt him, I have to admit that there’s a tiny part of me that wonders if he’s even alive right now.
An ancient, earsplitting groan interrupts my thoughts.
I look up, toward the source of the sound, and realize that the ceiling is caving in. The roof is coming apart. The walls are beginning to crumble. The long, circuitous hallways all ring around an interior courtyard within which lives a massive, prehistoric-looking tree. For no reason I can understand, the steel railings around the hallways are beginning to melt apart. I watch in real time as the tree catches fire, flames roaring higher at an astonishing rate. Smoke builds, curling in my direction, already beginning to suffocate the halls, and my heart is racing as I look around, my panic spiking. I start banging on the door, not caring who hears me now.
It’s the end of the fucking world out here.
I’m screaming for Nazeera, begging her to come out, to get out here before it’s too late, and I’m coughing now, smoke catching in my lungs, still hoping desperately that she’ll hear my voice when suddenly, violently—
The door swings open.
I’m knocked backward by the force of it, and when I look up, eyes burning, Nazeera is there. Nazeera, Lena, Stephan, Haider, Valentina, Nicolás, and Adam.
Adam.
I can’t explain exactly what happens next. There’s so much shouting. So much running. Stephan punches a clean hole through a crumbling wall, and Nazeera helps fly us all out to safety. It happens in a blur. I see things unfold in flashes, in screams.
It feels like a dream. My eyes stinging, tearing.
I’m crying because of the fire, I think. It’s the heat, the sky, the roaring flames devouring everything.
I watch the capital of Oceania—all 120 acres of it—go up in flames.
And Warner and Juliette go with it.
ELLA
(JULIETTE)
The first thing we do is find Emmaline.
I reach out to her in my mind and she answers right away. Heat, fingers of heat, curling around my bones. Sparking to life in my heart. She was always here, always with me.
I understand now.
I understand that the moments that saved me were gifts from my sister, gifts she was able to give only by destroying herself in return. She’s so much weaker now than she was two weeks ago because she expended so much of herself to keep me alive. To keep their machinations from reaching my heart. My soul.
I remember everything now. My mind is sharpened to a new point, honed to a clarity I’ve never before experienced. I see everything. Understand everything.
It doesn’t take long to find her.
I don’t apologize for the people I scatter, the walls I shatter along the way. I don’t apologize for my anger or my pain. I don’t stop moving when I see Tatiana and Azi; I don’t have to. I snap their necks from where I’m standing. I tear their bodies in half with a single gesture.
When I reach my sister, the agony inside of me reaches its peak. She is limp inside her tank, a desiccated fish, a dying spider. She’s curled into herself in its darkest corner, her long dark hair wrapping around her wrinkled, sagging figure. A low keening emanates fr
om her tank.
She is crying.
She is small. Scared. She reminds me of another version of myself, a person I can hardly remember, a young girl thrown in prison, too broken by the world to realize that she’d always had the power to break herself free. To conquer the earth.
I had that luxury.
Emmaline didn’t.
The sight of her makes me want to fall to pieces. My heart rages with anger, devastation. When I think about what they did to her—what they’ve done to her—
Don’t
I don’t.
I take a deep, shuddering breath. Try to collect myself. I feel Aaron take my hand and I squeeze his fingers in gratitude. It steadies me to have him here. To know he’s beside me. With me.
My partner in everything.
Tell me what you want, I say to Emmaline. Anything at all. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.
Silence.
Emmaline?
A sharp, desperate fear jumps through me.
Her fear, not mine.
Distorted sensations flash behind my eyes—flares of color, the sounds of grinding metal—and her panic intensifies. Tightens. I feel it hum down my spine.
“What’s wrong?” I say out loud. “What happened?”
Here
Here
Her milky form disappears into the tank, sinking deep underwater. Goose bumps rise along my arms.
“You seem to have forgotten about me.”
My father steps into the room, his tall rubber boots thudding softly against the floor.
I throw my arms out immediately, hoping to rip out his spleen, but he’s too fast—his movements too fast. He presses a single button on a small, handheld remote, and I hardly have time to take a breath before my body begins to convulse. I cry out, my eyes blinded by violent, violet light, and manage to turn my head only in small, excruciating movements.
Aaron.
He and I are both frozen here, bathed in a toxic light emanating from the ceiling. Gasping for breath. Shaking uncontrollably. My mind spins, working desperately to think of a plan, a loophole, a way out.
“I am astonished by your arrogance,” my father says. “Astonished that you thought you could just walk in here and assist in your sister’s suicide. You thought it would be simple? You thought there wouldn’t be consequences?”
He turns a dial and my body seizes more violently, lifting off the floor. The pain is blinding. Light flashes in and out of my eyes, stunning my mind, numbing my ability to think. I hang in the air, no longer able to turn my head. Gravity pushes and pulls at my body, threatens to tear apart my limbs.
If I could scream, I would.
“Anyway, it’s good you’re here. Best to get this over with now. We’ve waited long enough.” He nods, absently, at Emmaline’s tank. “Obviously you’ve seen how desperate we are for a new host.”
NO
The word is like a scream inside my head.
Max stiffens.
He looks up, staring at precisely nothing, the anger in his eyes barely held in check. I only realize then that he can hear her, too.
Of course he can.
Emmaline pounds against her tank, the sounds dull, the effort alone seeming to exhaust her. Still, she presses forward, her sunken cheek flattening against the glass.
Max hesitates, vacillating.
He’s no good at hiding his emotions—and his present uncertainty is easily discernible. It’s clear, even from my disoriented perspective, that he’s trying to decide which of us he needs to deal with first. Emmaline pounds her fist again, weaker this time.
NO
Another scream inside my head.
With a stifled sigh, Max decides on Emmaline.
I watch him pivot, stalk toward her tank. He presses his hand flat against the glass and it brightens to a neon blue. The blue light expands, then scatters around the chamber, slowly revealing an intricate series of electrical circuits. The neon veins are thicker in some places, occasionally braided, mostly fine. It resembles a cardiovascular system not unlike the one inside my own body.
My own body.
Something gasps to life inside of me. Reason. Rational thought. I’m trapped here, tricked by the pain into thinking I have no control over my powers, but that’s not true. When I force myself to remember, I can feel it. My energy still thrums through me. It’s a faint, desperate whisper—but it’s there.
Bit by agonizing bit, I gather my mind.
I grit my teeth, focusing my thoughts, clenching my body to its breaking point. Slowly, I braid together the disparate strands of my power, holding on to the threads for dear life.
And even more slowly, I claw my hand through the light.
The effort splits open my knuckles, the tips of my fingers. Fresh blood streaks across my hand and spills down my wrist as I lift my arm in a sluggish, excruciating arc above my head.
As if from light-years away, I hear beeping.
Max.
He’s inputting new codes into Emmaline’s tank. I have no idea what that means for her, but I can’t imagine it’s good.
Hurry.
Hurry, I tell myself.
Violently, I force my arm through the light, biting back a scream as I do. One by one, my fingers uncurl above my head, blood dripping from each digit down my bleeding wrist and into my eyes. My hand opens, palm up toward the ceiling. Fresh blood snakes down the planes of my face as I drive my energy into the light.
The ceiling shatters.
Aaron and I fall to the floor, hard, and I hear something snap in my leg, the pain screaming through me.
I fight it back.
The lights pop and shriek, the polished concrete ceiling beginning to crack. Max spins around, horror seizing his face as I throw my hand forward.
Close my fist.
Emmaline’s tank fissures with a sudden, violent crack.
“NO!” he cries. Feverishly, he pulls the remote free from his lab coat, hitting its now useless buttons. “No! No, no—”
The glass groans open with an angry yawn, giving way with one final, shattering roar. Max goes comically still.
Stunned.
He dies, then, with exactly that expression on his face. And it’s not me who kills him. It’s Emmaline.
Emmaline, who pulls her webbed hands free of the broken glass and presses her fingers to her father’s head. She kills him with nothing more than the force of her own mind.
The mind he gave her.
When she is done, his skull has split open. Blood leaks from his dead eyes. His teeth have fallen out of his face, onto his shirt. His intestines spill out from a severe rupture in his torso.
I look away.
Emmaline collapses to the floor. She’s gasping through the regulator fused to her face. Her already weak limbs begin to tremble, violently, and she’s making sounds I can only assume are meant to be words she’s no longer able to speak.
She is more amphibian than human.
I realize this only now, only when faced with the proof of her incompatibility with our air, with the outside world. I crawl toward her, dragging my broken, bloodied leg behind me.
Aaron tries to help, but when we lock eyes, he falls back.
He understands that I need to do this myself.
I gather my sister’s small, withered body against my own, pulling her wet limbs into my lap, pressing her head against my chest. And I say to her, for the second time:
“Tell me what you want. Anything at all. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
Her slick fingers clutch at my neck, clinging for dear life. A vision fills my head, a vision of everything going up in flames. A vision of this compound, her prison, disintegrating. She wants it razed, returned to dust.
“Consider it done,” I say to her.
She has another request. Just one more.
And I say nothing for too long.
Please
Her voice is in my heart, begging. Desperate. Her agony is acute. Her terror palpable.
; Tears spring to my eyes.
I press my cheek against her wet hair. I tell her how much I love her. How much she means to me. How much more I wish we could’ve had. I tell her that I will never forget her.
That I will miss her, every single day.
And then I ask her to let me take her body home with me when I am done.
A gentle warmth floods my mind, a heady feeling.
Happiness.
Yes, she says.
When it’s done, when I’ve ripped the tubes from her body, when I’ve gathered her wet, trembling bones against my own, when I’ve pressed my poisonous cheek to hers, when I’ve leeched out what little life was left in her body.
When it is done, I curl myself around her cold corpse and cry.
I clutch her hollow body against my heart and feel the injustice of it all roar through me. I feel it fracture me apart. I feel her take part of me with her as she goes.
And then I scream.
I scream until I feel the earth move beneath my feet, until I feel the wind change directions. I scream until the walls collapse, until I feel the electricity spark, until I feel the lights catch fire. I scream until the ground fissures, until all falls down.
And then we carry my sister home.
EPILOGUE
WARNER
one.
The wall is unusually white.
More white than is usual. Most people think white walls are true white, but the truth is, they only seem white, and are not actually white. Most shades of white are mixed in with a bit of yellow, which helps soften the harsh edges of a pure white, making it more of an ecru, or ivory. Various shades of cream. Egg white, even. True white is practically intolerable as a color, so white it’s nearly blue.
This wall, in particular, is not so white as to be offensive, but a sharp enough shade of white to pique my curiosity, which is nothing short of a miracle, really, because I’ve been staring at it for the greater part of an hour. Thirty-seven minutes, to be exact.