“These are children,” the woman says. “They were born into that life. They had no choice. No. You cannot do this. I won’t let you. It is our duty to—”
In one fluid movement, he stabs her.
I don’t even get a warning. Hardly notice him move his arm. Didn’t realize he was holding a blade, even though I’m body-sharing with him.
It’s just—
Blood. Redness. Death.
Everywhere.
“I’m not wasting time persuading you,” he mutters. “My staff should obey me.” He tilts his head to the side, licks his lips, then hums.
Four steps forward, and he stops. He sighs, mutters something under his breath, but I can’t hear what it is. It’s just sounds. I’m not fully in tune with him.
How can I be?
The calmness he felt as he murdered her squeezes me.
Don’t let yourself be distracted.
No. Right. Yes.
I draw on my powers, feel a slight wobble, pray I can do it while body-sharing. Accessing multiple powers was something I couldn’t practice with Taras and the others as I couldn’t body-share with them.
Raleigh’s powers open to me like a flower, and the beetles scurry out, startle me, even though I should’ve expected it.
I’m jolted back to where Raleigh is. A corridor. The door to a holding cell in front of him. I recognize what it is the moment I see it.
My stomach lurches, and, when he opens the door, I count forty, fifty children. He takes a moment, surveying them.
All Untamed.
His pulse feels too slow.
“Well, I suppose I’d better ask.” The pattern of his vision tells me he’s rolling his eyes. “Are you going to join us willingly?”
The children’s eyes all widen. Two of them take steps back.
One of the older boys goes forward though, pushes a younger boy behind him.
“Let us go.” His voice doesn’t even tremble.
“One last chance.” Raleigh’s voice is coiled.
He eyes each child in turn, and I realize what’s coming.
“Pointless even asking,” he mutters.
My heart hammers against my ribs, far, far away. Taras’s voice, concerned, floats toward me, but I can’t concentrate on that.
Take away his powers!
Now, Seven!
Take all of them away!
The Sarrs are screaming, screams that twist jagged edges into my soul.
Heat floods me, and I focus on Raleigh’s mind, his powers.
I can do this. I know how to do this.
I grab his mind. Start digging.
No, you’re too clumsy!
Calm down!
Be careful!
But there isn’t time to be careful.
Not now he’s here, and these children are here, and I’m here.
No, it’s too late for them. You’ve lost them. Concentrate on what you can do, on—
No. It’s not too late. It can’t be.
I can do it, I can get all his powers before he—
“Too late,” Raleigh snarls, turning to two guards who are in the room. “Kill them. And kill any more you capture, right away. There is no point in bringing them here.”
Guards?
I see their machine guns through his eyes, hear the—
No.
Screams.
Bangs.
Thuds.
I jolt as the Untamed fall, seemingly all together.
Blood.
No life.
No. He was supposed to use his powers. He’s a Seer. Guns are cheating and—
Get his powers!
Yes. Got to save Siora and Quinn, and Corin, too! Got to. Have to. Despite what he says.
I put everything into it, so much it hurts. Dig out his powers, call them to me.
All of them.
My heart pounds with the echoes in the room, my mind and—
And then I’ve done it.
I inhale sharply.
I’ve actually done it. Got his powers, all of them. Siora and Quinn aren’t linked. And Corin… I’ve got him… I can undo it.
I smile. Yes.
No! the Sarrs scream as Raleigh smiles. As he smiles, as he’s not in control of his own body.
I flinch, breathe hard, pull back.
Passive. Yes. Completely passive.
I wait.
Raleigh’s frozen, his smile still on his face. His facial muscles ache with it, and I feel the ache, like it’s burrowing inside me.
“Hello, Shania.” Raleigh’s voice is crisp, feels thin and sharp. “I know you’re here, and you did nothing to save those children. See? You are not the wonderful person you think you are. You pretend you care, but you’re choosing to let your people die. It is you who killed them, not me. You, by doing nothing. Actions speak louder than words, and I know you enjoy death.”
I stay silent.
No. He can’t know I’m here.
“Come on, Shania. Speak. Do you really think I’d let you get one step ahead like this?” He laughs, and the laugh booms through me, makes me feel like it’s me laughing, like all the evil entwined in the laughter is part of me. Like I’m bad.
Then they start moving. The powers I got from him. All the powers I’d brought over to my mind, my soul, just move, fly, faster and faster. Back to him. Just like the red-dots before.
No.
I fight back, struggle, feel his claws in my mind, and mine in his.
Sharp pain. Too much pain.
A ticking sensation in my head.
He’s in there.
Like before, at New Kitembu.
No. No. No.
This isn’t, this can’t—
“Yes!” Raleigh shouts.
“No!” I scream, scream through him, feel the evil, the darkness. Feel the—
It’s falling. I’m falling, and there’s a tunnel—my channel to the others—and he’s reaching in, and his claws are sharp, dragging red lines down the walls, the paths, as the tree bleeds, as I bleed.
He reaches out through me.
“Seven, disconnect!” Taras roars, and I don’t know how I hear him, but I do—as if he’s here too, wherever I am. Because I’m not in Raleigh’s body. Or my own.
But wherever I am, Raleigh’s here too.
The two of us.
“Seven! Disconnect!”
Raleigh’s eyes float in front of me. Perfect mirrors, except they’re not perfect because they don’t show my reflection, when I’m in front of him.
They show Untamed eyes. The old man, once hunched over his stick, now in a make-shift, wobbly chair. The younger man running.
No.
No.
No.
I scream, feel more blood—blood inside me. My soul, my powers.
“Too late.” Raleigh’s breath is a heavy fog around me.
“You’re not killing them too!” I yell, panic rising in me. What do I do?
But the Sarrs aren’t speaking.
I’m on my own.
Stuck.
Here. Wherever I am?
With Raleigh.
“Kill them?” he asks, his voice soft, deadly, like quicksand. “Oh, it won’t be me killing them. As you’ve already proven, me killing Untamed achieves nothing. You did not surrender, you didn’t interfere, you did not even try to talk me out of it. You don’t care about Untamed you’ve never met. That is a sure sign of someone who’s never meant to have as much power as you do.”
Power booms around me. His power. It makes me hurt more. Makes everything hurt.
I am raw, and I try to fight it—it’s instinct, even though I don’t know what he’s doing—but it’s…it’s my power. I recognize it, how it feels.
He’s using my power.
I summon my own, have to meet his—mine—with what I have, but mine don’t respond. They’re just shreds.
“No, this is going to do what the threat on your boyfriend’s life didn’t. This is going to get you to act, this is
going to achieve something,” Raleigh croons. “Don’t you feel it yet, my darling butterfly? Open your wings and survey your territory. Look properly and see.”
I look, and the faces are there. In front of me. Flashing.
Red dots.
“Thank you for your channels,” Raleigh says, his smile growing. “That was much appreciated. Really, I hadn’t expected to get access to them, to all the Untamed so quickly. It’s certainly moved my plan along faster. I was envisioning it to be at least several days’ work to get you to connect, so thank you for that. Now, are you going to surrender, so they can live? I won’t kill them. See, I’m kind. I am not that monster—that was just me testing you. I will save them.”
Surrender?
“No,” I whisper.
“I assure you, surrendering the Untamed, letting them become Chosen Ones, is the best option—unless, of course, you enjoy death, you’re choosing death, and you want your people to die.”
I am shaking. Everything in me is shaking. “I am not surrendering.”
“Then know that I am not the monster, but you are. You are choosing death as the way forward.” He laughs. “Every single one of your Untamed is now bonded with every Chosen One. Even those who you’ve hidden. Don’t you see? There’s no point in resisting now.”
My eyes widen. He was talking about all my people before? All the Untamed… But he said flesh and blood.
The Untamed are a family.
I feel sick.
It wasn’t Siora and Quinn. He wasn’t talking about them….
He was talking about everyone. The Untamed.
I’ve given him us.
All of us.
“Your people are out there, Shania. One of them is bound to come across one of mine. If any of your Untamed kill any of my people, every single Untamed will die in an instant. You, Shania, will be the only one left, and my people will win, for I will kill you like a fly under my shoe. The Chosen will win, regardless. Give your people a future—with me—or watch them all die, just as these children did, knowing you could’ve stopped it.”
I am screaming.
Screaming and screaming.
“Seven, it is all right.” Taras’s voice.
I blink. Elf and Taras and Siora and Quinn.
No Raleigh.
I turn, heart pounding. I’m back in the stone settlement. Where it’s safe. But the other Untamed out there—if they kill any Enhanced, we’re dead. All of us. Apart from me. But then the Untamed can’t win the war because I have to die for it to end.
If this happens, the Enhanced Ones win.
Oh Gods.
I need everyone here.
“Power,” I pant. “I need more power. I need to bring everyone here. It’s the only safe place.”
I race around, arms flying out. I push back Elf, who tries to stop me. Tree ferns blur into one mass of green as I feel the power building inside me. It’s my power.
I reach out.
“Find the Untamed!” I yell, throwing my power out, feeling the channels, because they’re still mine. Raleigh only accessed them, copied them? But—
Nothing happens.
I can’t do it.
My powers—they’re there, but they’re wrong.
But I need to do it.
I have to.
I thought I could. All those connections—I thought I could bring them here. My heart hammers, faster, faster, faster.
But there’s nothing in me. My powers, all jolted, jigged, mixed up. Bleeding—the damage of Raleigh’s claws.
My stomach roils. Do they need time to settle again?
But there isn’t time!
“Taras!” I scream, sudden tears blinding me. “Taras, I need your help! All of you! Siora? Quinn? Elf?”
Four of them. Their powers…will it be enough? Can they—
They haven’t got their powers. Not like they used to.
I took most of their powers.
I scream again, and then, through broken sentences and cries, I tell them what’s happened.
I tell them it’s over, and the humid air laughs.
Raleigh’s going to win.
No. My father’s voice. Just a memory. Never think that.
But I do. I can’t help it.
It is.
They all stare at me. Everyone.
We’re all here. Taras called a meeting, though I don’t know what good it will do. Maybe it’s so when one of the outside Untamed kills an Enhanced, I see everyone here die around me, and I know what I’ve done.
I can barely look at them.
“What have you done?” they scream. “How?”
“Why would you do that? Gods, if I could get out of here, I’d convert in an instant because of what you’ve done.”
“Cal, you don’t mean that—”
“I do. I want to live. I don’t care how I live. I don’t want to die because of a mistake this stupid girl has made. If I had an augmenter right now, I’d drink it in a heartbeat. Hell, I’d convert us all. It’s the only way—it’s always been the only way it’ll end. We’re tiny, we’re nothing. And she—” He points at me, a savage look on his face. “She has just ensured that we can only survive the war as Enhanced—that’s if we don’t die any second now.”
Melissa turns to me. “Have you wanted us to lose all this time?”
“She used to be Enhanced,” Yani says.
“How can she be Untamed now then?”
“Hey! She wasn’t Enhanced! Not fully!” Corin yells. “And she didn’t plan this.” The first words he’s said since he’s heard.
But they don’t make me feel safer as I stare at the angry faces.
“I was trying to make it better,” I say, but it sounds pathetic.
“This was Raleigh’s plan all along,” Taras says. “He’s trying to force her hand. This is not Seven’s fault.”
But it feels like it is.
“We need to work out what we’re going to do now,” Esther says, and I’m grateful. To both her and Corin. And the other Seers. The only people on my side.
Or the only people who are at least pretending.
“We need to get all the other Untamed here,” Elf says. “As soon as possible.”
Taras nods. “Yes, we need to unite! But her mind needs time to heal and settle, else the instability may worsen things. She’s been through a lot today.”
“She has?”
“Gods, what about us! Look at what she’s done!”
“How can things get any worse?”
“Time could get us all killed if we wait for her.”
But they have to. This isn’t just a case of waiting for my mind to heal. My powers are unusable. Too jumbled up, my soul bleeding because of Raleigh. He did that on purpose?
Of course he did.
“Why did you body-share with him?” one of the reindeer herders yells at me. “After last time when he took your powers? Surely you realized he’d take something else? Or do we not matter?”
“That’s not fair,” Quinn shouts. She moves over to my side, places a hand on my arm. The sudden gesture from her makes me cry.
“Yes, just cry,” someone shouts. “That will sort things out.”
Then they’re all shouting, and Taras is trying to regain order, yelling, but no one’s listening to him.
I turn, see Bea run from the room.
Running seems like a good idea.
I push my chair back, startle Quinn, and I turn and run.
I’m fast. My speed is nothing to do with my powers. I run and run, until I’m out of the building, away from it all.
I keep running.
Through the trees, the shrubs, see the spirits ahead. The way out.
But I can’t control them now, can’t get them to step aside, command them to let me leave. But if I leave, if I’m on the outside, I could get to the others, find the other Untamed. Tell them they can’t kill any Enhanced, make them believe, make them understand.
But the idea’s futile. I know that.<
br />
I’d never reach them all, not quickly enough. They’re spread out across the world.
And my powers, my mind—how soon can I use my powers? How soon before that damage heals? Will it heal?
I gulp. It has to.
Or the Untamed really are going to die. They could anyway. Any second now.
I turn, kick at a tree root that lifts out of the ground like a rising sun, watch it move, then bounce back to its original position.
I take a deep breath, try to wipe my tears away, then grab a handful of leaves, yank them so their stems snap.
Snap.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to no one, to everyone, as I watch the leaves fall to the ground.
I take another breath, and another and—
A spirit. In front of me.
My brother.
He’s here.
At last.
“Three?” My voice catches in my throat, and then I’m running to him.
I slam into him, my arms around him. He feels real, solid, as he hugs me. My brother. Here. He’s here.
Relief floods through me. There’s always hope. There’s always got to be hope. Right now, Three is that. He’s the hope I need. He has to be.
I look up at him. He looks so the same it nearly hurts me. And he looks so strong, in control, like he’s not in pain at all. Yet I know he is. He hides it well.
Use us, he says.
The spirits? Yes.
“Yeah, that’s what I was going to try and do. But my powers—”
No. He shakes his head. We—
He disappears, and I stare at the foliage that was behind him.
My heart pounds, and I turn, look around. He’s got to be here, somewhere. He has to be.
Because he was about to say something. He was about to say the hope, the hope that I need.
He can’t have gone. He can’t have.
“Three?” I scream, and then I’m running again, looking for him.
My feet pound the ground, my lungs burn as I yell his name over and over.
But there’s nothing. And I need him to be here. Not just so we can talk about the war, how I can end it, if I can, but also everything else: the chasm between us, what happened at New Kitembu, his death, and the last time we saw each other. The way we both said sorry, how his apology nearly broke me. How I know he’s still my brother, even after everything.
I run and run, skitter down the mountainside, nearly lose my balance a few times, slam into huge trunks to stop myself when my momentum gets too much.
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