Alpha

by Jus Accardo

  He sighed and sank into the chair by the door. “This whole situation sucks for both of us. Being here is…hard.”

  “One way to put it,” I mumbled through a mouthful of food. Turkey. Possibly chicken. The bread was starting to go stale, and the mayo was warm, but it didn’t matter. “If you’re about to apologize for the fact that you can’t stand the sight of me, don’t.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “Tell me how you would feel if you had to stare at the face of the guy who killed someone you loved? If you had to stand beside the spitting image of someone who you’d watched spill innocent blood for no good reason?”

  “Probably wouldn’t be a fan.” If he only knew the truth, that I was more than just the spitting image of a killer, then he would gut me where I sat.

  “Think about what it might be like if that person, that monster, was also your brother. Your own flesh and blood. Think about how you would feel if you let him slip through your fingers countless times.”

  “Hey.” I threw up my hands and gave a short nod. “No judgment. We’re not here to be friends. You don’t need to like me. You just have to help me get Sera back, and then we can go our own ways. Like I said, no need to apologize. I get it. But just so we’re clear—I wasn’t the one who killed your girl. You can stop glaring at me like I’m guilty.”

  “Thought it didn’t bother you.”

  “It doesn’t,” I lied. It might have bothered me a little. I was a bastard, but if I’d had a brother on my Earth, I sure as shit wouldn’t have taken away the girl he’d loved. If Cade had done something to slight Dylan, then he should have gone for his brother. Hurting someone innocent to harm your target? That was weak. It was cowardly.

  He sank onto the bed across from me. “I wonder if you had an Ava of your own. Where you come from, I mean.”

  All I wanted was to go to sleep, but the guy seemed intent on talking. I hoped if I indulged him for a few minutes, he’d leave me the hell alone. “I didn’t.”

  “But your memory—”

  “Is all screwed up,” I finished for him. “But not like you think. What’s wrong with my head isn’t the same as Sera’s memory loss.” It was the most I’d ever said on the matter. The most I’d ever say. If Sera knew the truth about me…

  He waited for more and, when I didn’t continue, said, “It must be hard for you. For Av—Sera, too. Not knowing where you came from…”

  I shrugged. “Not sure ‘hard’ is the word I’d use. I mean, it is for Sera. Not being able to remember almost destroyed her. She was there a few days longer than I was. Those first nights I remember hearing her cry…”

  I still heard the sound, so vivid, in my head. If I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, I’d still be able to smell the bleach and mothball-scented air of that place. Some nights I still tasted the blood in my mouth and felt the sting of the needles as they pierced sensitive skin. She didn’t know that I remembered those early days—she couldn’t. I’d never told her, because really, what the hell good would it have done? That knowledge would have only led to questions I couldn’t answer. To things that would hurt her.

  “She had it ten times harder than me, and if it’s the last thing I do on this Earth, I’m going to make Cora Anderson pay for every second Sera suffered.”

  “You guys got close, huh,” Cade said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah. We did. At first it was about survival. We kept each other anchored, ya know?” I lifted my head and found him watching me intently. Waiting for me to spill out all my messy insides. What the hell was I doing? My feelings for Sera, what she meant to me, were my business. The fewer people who knew she was my weakness, the better. Cora had known. She’d used it against me at every turn. All it’d taken was a single veiled threat about a girl I’d never seen before, and I was compliant in ways that made me hate myself. “Yeah. It was survival, and then it wasn’t. She’s important to me.”

  There. End of conversation.

  “So you remember when you were first there, but not your life before?”

  Or not.

  “Whatever the stuff was that they gave me, it targeted a certain part of the brain.” Another lie. Lies were all that came from my mouth these days.

  “Like, long term memory?”

  I shrugged. It was as good an explanation as any. “Sounds right.”

  “So you don’t care? About not being able to remember anything?”

  The question wasn’t did I care—but would I? My memories were all intact. Every single, miserable last one of them. Not being able to remember? That would have been a fucking blessing. One the universe obviously didn’t think I deserved.

  “I care more about the side effects of what they did to me than the result.” It wasn’t a lie. The serum I’d been given had other side effects, but memory loss, no matter how much I would have welcomed it, wasn’t one. But no one knew that—and it was going to stay that way.

  “Your temper, you mean?”

  I shook my head. He still didn’t get it—despite my multiple attempts at explanation. “You can’t classify it as a temper. They didn’t make me angry.” Well, they had, but that wasn’t the point here. “They made me unstable. A temper is something you can control. What I am…isn’t.”

  Cade shrugged. “I haven’t seen that. You’ve flown off the handle a couple of times, but you’re under a lot of stress, man. That’s bound to take a toll.”

  I’d overheard Noah say once that Cade had an overly optimistic way of looking at things. He wasn’t kidding. I thought back to all those days in lockup at Infinity. All those tests and experiments. I remembered the moments I was locked inside myself, unable to move or speak, and the times I had no control, my limbs thrashing and fists swinging as if they had a brain of their own. Those were the times that scared me most. The utter clarity of what was happening around me with no way to stop it. I couldn’t count the number of Cora’s men I’d injured—or even killed in those moments. There was no way to shrug off the feeling of joy it’d given me to see them lying there, broken and bloodied, even though the guilt of it was like a noose around my neck. Those were the moments I’d come close to the breaking point, to the line Cora had tried so hard to nudge me across. Somehow I knew that if I crossed that line, there would be no coming back. What little humanity I had left in me would be gone, and the person I wanted to be would die. The person I wanted to be for Sera.

  I didn’t much care for Cade, but he’d never done me wrong. I had no reason to want him harmed.

  At least not yet.

  “Pray that you don’t.”

  Chapter Three

  Sera

  The scenery changed. I hadn’t been skipping long, but so far, the differences had been subtle. This time, though, it was a shock to the system. All the foliage was gone. The trees that loomed overhead only moments ago now gave way to a wide open, angry-looking sky as thunder rumbled in the distance. Instead of lush grass, there were pebbles, a mix of smooth dark brown and jagged light gray, and the wind that whipped around us was icy. It sliced through me like a blade, leaving an all-over chill that made my teeth chatter.

  “This isn’t creepy at all,” I said, more to myself than to Dylan. The buildings were all the same. Brick-faced and boxy with round tinted windows that each had a single horizontal bar across the middle. Every rooftop ended in a vicious-looking point and had an assortment of metal rods poking upward. Some were simple and smooth, while others had intricate designs and spindly protrusions. “Please tell me you don’t plan on staying here long.”

  On the sidewalk across the street, a couple walked hand in hand. The man wore a suit in the most obnoxiously bright yellow I’d ever seen, making him stand out against the dankness of his surroundings. His companion, however, matched the building and sky in their bleakness. Her long skirt was charcoal gray, and her oversize jacket flat black. On her head was a large hat—also black—that hid most of her face.

  Dylan turned in a slow circle and let out a whistle. “Wond
er what the deal is.”

  “Does it matter?” I folded my arms. “Are we staying or not? I’m hungry, and I’d like to get some sleep.”

  He faced me, and no matter how hard I tried not to see it, it was impossible to ignore the hope in his eyes. His expression softened, lips relaxing. “Do you want to stay? Or would you rather we move on? We can do whatever—”

  “I don’t care what you do.” I owed this guy no civility. He was a monster and a thief. Playing nice would only feed into his delusion that one day I would accept him. That maybe we’d skip off into the sunset together and live behind a white picket fence. “I’m your prisoner, Dylan. Nothing more. Never more. Don’t pretend like my opinion matters. If it did, you’d take me back to my friends.”

  The light in his eyes drained away, replaced by fury. “I’m getting sick and tired of hearing this shit. How about a solution? I wait for G to show up, then just kill him. Sound good? Then you’ll have no reason to want to leave. There’ll be no one to go back to.”

  My fingers curled tight, desperate to wrap themselves around his neck. I imagined myself choking him, watching the life slip from his body as he took his last breath. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “I want you back!”

  “You can’t have me back. You never had me. You had Ava.” I positioned myself directly in front of him, so close that the brown of his eyes was all I saw. I smelled the cheap motel shampoo he’d used this morning and the slight minty scent of the complimentary mouthwash. It wasn’t foul but sickened me all the same. “Ava. Is. Dead.”

  His reaction was swift and harsh. He pushed me. Not hard, but enough to send me off balance. I stumbled, landing on the ground with jarring force. My palm scraped the surface, grating the skin against the uneven rock. “Ava isn’t dead,” he seethed. “You are Ava.”

  “My name is Sera,” I fired back. I didn’t scramble away as he came to stand over me, and I didn’t try to stand. Normally, he would never act this way where someone might see us, but he’d been growing careless lately. My resistance was wearing him down. “Sera. Say it. Remember it.”

  He towered over me, blotting out the bleakness of the sky. He was very still, very silent, and the fire in his eyes was all-consuming. In those first few days, despite what I’d heard, I felt sorry for him. I knew what loss felt like—even if I didn’t know exactly what I’d lost. It could drive you to madness. It could make you question reality. But with each passing day, it became more and more clear that Dylan’s loss had destroyed him. It had damaged him irreparably and transformed him into a creature incapable of reason.

  “I have all the time in the world,” he said. There was ice in his tone beneath the barely contained anger. “I can wait you out. You will realize that you love me.”

  I picked myself off the ground and stood in front of him. I didn’t slouch or flinch. I looked him dead in the eye. “Why?”

  His brows rose. “Why, what?”

  “Why do you think that? What makes you believe that I’ll love you?” I kept my tone even and my expression as neutral as possible. Maybe I could make him see that this whole thing was impossible. At some point, he must have been a reasonable person. Maybe there was a sliver of that still buried inside. “I say this without judgment, but look at all the things you’ve done. All the people you’ve hurt and the lives you’ve destroyed. How would you expect me—anyone—to get past that?”

  His expression softened. The anger wasn’t gone, but he’d come down a notch or two. It was the best I could hope for. “Because it’s always that way,” he said. “I’ve got my flaws, but you always see past them. You always find the best version of me.”

  “Dylan, there are some lines that, once crossed, you just can’t come back from. If your Ava were here, if she knew what you’d done, do you really believe she’d still be able to move past it all?”

  “Absolutely.” There was no hesitation.

  I threw my hands into the air. “How can you possibly say that?”

  “Because that’s just what Ava does. What she always does. All of you. You’re all the same. You all love me.”

  “All?”

  “Whenever we’re there.” There was a flash of vulnerability in his voice. “Whenever we’re both around. The other Avas. The other Dylans…”

  “And how often is that?”

  There was a flash of something dark in his eyes. His fists clenched at his sides. He was at war with himself, that much was obvious. But there was pain there, as well. “Can’t you see that I’m doing all this for your own good? That I’m trying to save you?”

  For the first time, I got the feeling that he wasn’t referring to Cora. For some reason, it sent a chill skittering across my skin. “Save me from what?”

  “I’m sick of watching it happen.” He pulled away and started to pace with quick, jerky movements that made me flinch. “Time after time, I find you. Sometimes I’m too late. Sometimes you’re already gone. Other times—” He froze, back facing me, and shuddered violently. “Other times I actually see it happen.” He laughed. It was a harsh sound. Like something shattering into a million tiny pieces. “It’s funny, when you consider what I’ve been doing to my brother.”

  A knot of dread formed deep in the pit of my stomach. Despite the cold, dismal surroundings, a wave of uncomfortable warmth overcame me. “See what happen?”

  “The universe keeps ripping you away from me.”

  “Ripping—”

  “You die, Ava!” he shouted. “You always die. Accidents, disease, natural disasters… Your life is always cut short.”

  “If that’s what’s meant to be, then that’s what’s meant to be.” He looked horrified, and the agony in his eyes overrode some of my anger. Obviously I didn’t want to die. Not really. “Look, I’m sorry. That you’ve had to go through all this, to see it happen—that had to be horrible. But you can’t save me. You picked me off the shelf with an expiration date. Keeping me tucked away somewhere isn’t going to change the outcome of all this.”

  “And that outcome would be?”

  “You just said it yourself. I’m going to die.”

  “You’re not,” he said with a resolute shake of his head. “Not this time. I have you, and I know. I intend to keep you safe. I’m going to prove that I can protect you.”

  “You can’t,” I insisted. With each day that passed, it was like an expanding cloud over my head, an encompassing black thing that haunted every move I made. “Unless you let me go, I’m going to die.”

  “Do you plan on running back to Cora?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then what good would letting you run off be?” He narrowed his eyes. “She’s the only one who can save you. Isn’t that what she said?”

  “Just let me go. Let me go back to—”

  “No!” he roared. “That’s all you care about. Getting back to him.”

  “He was there with me. If anyone other than Cora can help—”

  “No!”

  This was getting me nowhere. I’d need a different approach—but what? Reason didn’t work, and I was pretty sure I didn’t have the stomach—or the acting chops—to pretend to fall for him. Besides the fact that I hated him almost as much as I hated Cora, I didn’t think I’d have the time. No. I’d need something that appealed to a weakness. The problem was, I seemed to be the only crack in his armor.

  But maybe that was just what I needed.

  “How about we make a deal?” I felt dirty even suggesting it, but I was desperate.

  He regarded me silently, but the slight upturn of his head told me he was interested. Good. It was a start.

  “Tell me. Tell me exactly what it is you want from me. You keep saying you want me back, but logically, you have to know that isn’t possible. Not the way you need. No matter what you do or say, Dylan, I’m never going to wake up one day and just love you. So tell me exactly what it is you hope to gain from all this.”

  He inhaled, never taking his eyes off me. “I w
ant you to give me a chance. I want you to give us a chance.” He blew out slowly and ran a hand through his dark hair. “I’m not an idiot. I know I’ve done some pretty fucked-up things. I know there’s no coming back from it—with the rest of the world. But you… You always have the ability to see me for the person I could be.”

  “And that’s what you want me to do? See you for what you could be—and not what you’ve become?”

  “That’s exactly what I want.”

  There was a hint of desperation in his voice, and I almost felt sorry for him. What he was asking was impossible, though. I’d never see him as anything other than a monster. He’d slaughtered innocent people simply because he was angry with their doubles on another world. He’d killed the same girl again and again to hurt his own brother. “Because you want Ava back.”

  “Yes.”

  I couldn’t get past those things—but maybe someone else could. More specifically, maybe I could get him to think someone else would. “Then here’s my offer. I’ll help you find another Ava, and you’ll let me go.”

  He opened his mouth, but I wasn’t finished yet. G and the others had come close to reaching us a few times. If Dylan had been distracted, if they’d just had a bit more time… Maybe I could give them that. I had no intention of offering up another version of myself to him, but if he thought I would…

  “There are other conditions.” I rushed on. “You will not hurt G or any of the others. Actually, you won’t hurt anyone. Kori? Those people you told me about? The Tribunal? Off-limits from here on out. No more bloodshed.”

  He thought about it for a minute. “I already found an Ava.” He inclined his head toward me. “Why keep looking?”

  “Because I’m not Ava. I’m never going to be Ava. My name is Sera—and no matter what you say or do, no matter what threats you make, I will never love you.”

  He didn’t respond right away. Instead he stared. He didn’t blink or drop his gaze, but then he did smile. “I’ll agree to those terms, but I have terms of my own.”