“Like you, from what I can gather. Ambitious. Resourceful. Best of the best. Hell of a mouth on her.”
“I like her already.”
“So did I.”
There’s one thing different about this other Eve, though. She talked to the other groups, made connections with them. I’ve always regretted not doing that, but I was spread so thin with caring for my own unit. If I’d cared about the others… how would I have faced them in battle?
“This is really, really, really weird,” says Ben helpfully. “What… what are we going to do now?”
I swallow. “I’d like to take down the Institute I just came from,” I tell them. “But I’m not sure there’s enough of us.”
Dell, myself, Gabe, Mi, Abi, Lili, Bullet… we’re probably ready. Scarlet will want in, of course. Ben and Joni are too young, too inexperienced. We’d need a much larger team to pull this off.
“How many more would we need?” Dell asks.
“Too many variables,” say Lili and Abi at the same time.
“We’d need plans of the place–”
“An estimation of the number of guards–”
“An idea of their weaponry and defences…”
“Summarise,” I say shortly.
Abi exhales. “You and Gabe would need to tell us everything you know. We can work on something from that.”
“But our numbers are still too small to launch a full-scale assault,” Lili continues. “We need more people. We either need Sia and anyone she brings with her, or… or ask Rudy to help.”
“Which is likely to happen sooner?” Dell asks.
“Sia,” we say unanimously.
He claps his hands. “Right then. Guess that’s settled. Where can I bunk?”
◆◆◆
Taking Dell back to base would arouse far too many questions. I’m also –although I don’t state it– wary of taking him back to ours. We try to limit the number of people who know where we live. My instinct is to trust Dell. He is one of us. He doesn’t appear brainwashed like Vixen, a chimera whose loyalty to the Institute was, quite frankly, disturbing. He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him about the other Institutes, a fact he would have known if he were sent as a spy. But we are all trained liars. Caution is something we cannot afford to let slide.
“I can stash you at the Infirmary, if you’re OK with that?” Mi proposes. “I don’t have too many patients at the moment. It’s a bit basic, but there’s food and hot water–”
Dell moans. “Be still my beating heart…”
Mi chews his lip. “Julia might have to be told,” he says. “But I suppose we could just say he’s one of us passing through, and leave it at that? She doesn’t need to know what we’re planning.”
“Ashe hasn’t exactly been secretive about her plans,” Scarlet adds. “She might figure it out.”
“And if she does? Rudy can’t stop us as long as we’re not using his equipment.”
“Something else we need to take into account,” Abi interjects. “We’ll need weapons. Two vans at least…”
Weapons aren't so much of an issue. I know where to steal those from. The vans, however, raise a significant problem. Even if we had several, we don’t have enough drivers. We cannot transport the chimeras we rescue away from the site. We can bust them out, we can fight off the guards, but when we do… they’re on their own.
“I’ve got a van,” Dell says. “It can transport all of us. The others…”
We all nod grimly, sharing the same thought. Abi and Lili look at one another. “We’ll see what we can come up with,” they say, although their faces don’t yield much hope.
There is little else we can do today. Scarlet takes the younger chimeras back to base. Abi assures Lili she’ll be there bright and early tomorrow to get started on the plans and goes back to the loft with Ben to explain everything to Gabe. I elect to escort Dell to the Infirmary with Mi. I still have questions about his Institute, his life. It has been so different from mine.
Mi installs Dell in a room away from the main hall, and then gives him a quick tour of the place while I make up a bed for him. The room is part store cupboard, part hospital. There’s buckets and mops crammed in between a rickety hospital bed and a transfusion kit. I move some boxes aside to clean some space, and a book falls loose. It’s been marked by a red ribbon and opens on a page with an illustration of a hagged, red-eyed patient. The skin has shrunk against their bones, making them look more skeleton than human.
It’s labelled Nemean Withdrawal.
Don’t read it, Ashe, a voice warns. But how could I not? How could I not want to know what he’s not willing to face?
Having missed a dose, the subject first started displaying signs of twitchiness and irritability. Within an hour, they had progressed to full-blown rage. They began to plead and beg for another dose. The screaming started shortly after. This continued, almost non-stop, for at least three hours, at which point the patient had exhausted themselves. They were curled up in a fetal position, murmuring. At the end of twenty-four hours, the patient had not been able to sleep. They vomited whenever presented with food, claiming that they couldn’t stand the sensation of food in their mouths. They were feverish, experiencing heightened sensitivity to light, sound, and touch. They started to scratch at their skin…”
The list of effects continues into full-blown madness, at which point I stop reading. I hold the book in my hands, my vision blurry.
Mi’s footsteps shuffle along the corridor. “I’ve just shown Dell the showers and, well, he’ll probably still be there tomorrow. Have we got some extra clothes for him? Wait– where do you think he’s left his van?”
My throat tightens. I cannot move.
“Ashe?” Mi asks. He steps forwards, hands extended. His fingers fall across the book clutched in my grip, on the frayed bit of ribbon between pages. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, Ashe, I’m sorry–”
“It’s all right.”
Mi sighs. “You really don’t have to pretend, you know.”
“Oh,” I say, my voice tighter than ever, “but I really do. What… what’s this doing here?”
“Scarlet and I were doing some research. We were considering, uh, drastic action.”
“Like, tying him up and forcing it out of his system?”
“Something like that, yeah. We thought maybe we could wean him off, but–”
“She couldn’t do that to him?”
Mi swallows. “Neither of us could.”
I close the book, shutting away any faint hope of some magical cure, a way for things to return to the way things were.
“This was his room, wasn’t it? When he last had the pax?”
Mi nods. “You… you should know, Ashe, just how much he–”
“I do know,” I say swiftly. “Fat lot of good that does me when he doesn’t any more.”
“Ashe–”
“I’m not mad at you, I just… I’ll see you back home.”
Halfway out the door, Mi yells after me, “Who are you mad at, then?”
It’s not myself. It’s the world. Nick told me once that he didn’t believe in fate until he met me, that it seemed impossible to him that our lives colliding wasn’t part of some great cosmic plan. If that was true, what was the sense in this now? Why had we met? Why was it necessary that all this had to happen?
Because the truth is, there’s no such thing as fate. We’re alone in this world. We always were.
Chapter 45
Back at the loft, Abi has caught Gabe up on everything and the two of them are bent over her sketchpad, recreating plans of the Institute from memory. His face is pale, his jaw tight. In his head, those pencil lines of Abi’s have risen up, dividing him from us once more. He is trapped within its walls.
I stand beside him, suggesting that he starts on dinner while I add to what Abi’s come up with. I have more knowledge of some of the basement levels after all. His hand brushes mine gratefully.
By now, they’ll have discovered
the hole we used to escape the facility. It’ll be boarded up again, but I’m confident I can burn through it again if I need to.
I hope they didn’t find Xaph. They didn’t find him when they moved in, I reason. He knows how to hide. He’ll be fine.
Please be fine.
I sink into an uneasy sleep of narrow corridors and children in tanks. In the morning, it is clear no one else has had much sleep either. Gabe looks almost physically sick, his skin pale and clammy.
Abi and Mi head off early, as promised. Ben goes to school. I elect to stay behind, at least for now. I have a feeling I’m needed here more.
The second I feel them hit the stairs, I cross the room and pull Gabe into my arms. His weight falls against me, his face pressing against my neck.
“You don’t have to go back,” I whisper. “When Sia comes, we should have enough–”
Gabe chuckles hollowly, still clutching onto me. “Like I’m ever, ever letting you go back to that place again, not without me–”
“You only just got out. You’re allowed to… to be…”
“To be terrified, you mean?” He inches back.
“Yes.”
“How do you feel, when you’re terrified?”
“Like I’m a coward,” I answer honestly. “All the reasoning in the world doesn’t let me feel anything but disappointed in myself.”
“Then you know how I’ll feel.” He slides his hands to my cheeks and I hold them there. He presses his forehead to mine. “Do not leave me in the dark,” he whispers. “And do not go where I can’t follow.”
I could no sooner splinter from his side than I could from myself. “All right,” I say. “Together it is.”
“Don’t rush off just yet.”
“I won’t.”
“Come to bed with me.”
“What?”
“I don’t mean… not like that…” He looks down awkwardly. “Let’s… let’s lie together like we did when we were children. Just for a moment. I never felt safer.”
I have felt safer, since those years long gone by, but of course Gabe doesn’t. He hasn't have the luxury of that, he hasn’t been free long enough. He still knows so little of what even we’ve come to take for granted.
“I… of course…”
I take him by the hand and lead him towards my bed. I pull back the covers and we climb in, pulling them over our heads like a tent. We turn to each other in the gloom.
“Better bed,” Gabe murmurs. “Bigger.”
“So are we.”
I slide my hand against his. I’m still not used to their strange shape, the way they dwarf mine. When I think of Gabe’s hands, they’re small, pudgy, child-sized things… more like Ben’s than any adult’s. I have changed, we have changed, I have changed so much…
“It doesn’t matter,” Gabe sighs, reading every emotion. “Nothing matters, when we’re together.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
I can feel his urge to kiss me surfacing, and this time, when he reaches across, I don’t resist.
◆◆◆
We both slept so poorly that after a while of lying in the warm, dark silence, we find ourselves nodding off. It is blissful, haunting sleep, and when I rise, suddenly awake, Gabe is still beside me, lost to pleasant dreams. He looks so peaceful lying there that I almost want to kiss him again, but I don’t. I’m not sure I want to fall into that place. It was only one kiss…
I shuffle into the sitting room, my body readjusting from the mid-morning nap. We are not alone. There’s a murmuring from Mi’s room, hushed voices.
Scarlet and Mi. They must have doubled-back here, thinking we’d be gone. Scarlet giggles loudly. Mi doesn’t even try to hush her. He doesn’t know we’re here. He hasn’t checked. The mood he must have been in to let down his guard, not scan his senses about…
Then again, I didn’t wake when they came in, and something tells me they probably weren’t being quiet.
“Mi?” All traces of a laugh vanish from Scarlet’s voice, but his remains feather-soft. I imagine him stroking her hair, drawing circles on her back, twining his fingers in hers… “I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“You know Ashe and Gabe have that weird, almost telepathic connection?”
“It had not escaped my notice.”
“Do you… do you and he have anything similar? People say it’s a twin thing.”
Mi shuffles in his covers. “A bit,” he admits, “like, I can usually sense when he’s there. But not like words or feelings. Weirdly, I swear we used to when we were really little. But it’s a hazy, foggy memory. I don’t think there’s ever been anything quite as clear as what he shares with Ashe.”
That’s putting it lightly.
“OK,” says Scarlet, a little more hesitantly. “I have another question. But… it's a personal one.”
“My favourite.” There’s a grin in his voice.
“OK…” She sounds nervous. “Do you... do you ever wish you could see again?”
Oh no, not this. I have dreaded this question for years, never wanted it answered, tried to push it to the back of all of my thoughts.
For the longest of times, Mi is silent. I begin to think he will not answer at all.
“I'd like to say no,” he says eventually. “I'd like everyone to think that I am one-hundred-percent totally OK with who I am now, but I'm not. Not a hundred. Maybe ninety. I don't miss it all the time. I'm far from useless without it. I've even learned to turn it into a strength in some respects, but…”
“But?”
“There’s things I miss. Colour. I miss colour. I listen to Abi describe it to me, and I realise I'm forgetting what colour looks like. And… people. I can still just about remember what Ashe and Abi look like, but... Ben was just a baby. I've only got a faint idea what he looks like. Even Gabe's face... my face... is a bit obscure to me. And yours...” He pauses. “I’d really, really like to know what you look like.”
“You're not missing much, trust me.”
This is a lie, of course, and she must know it. She’s the definition of confidence.
“You'd be beautiful to me whatever you looked like.”
“Hmm, you're very good at that.”
“Shamelessly flattering you? I should hope so.”
“No one but you has ever made me feel beautiful before.”
Their voices fall silent, but the sheets rustle. Kisses permeate the air, slow and steady. They crackle against my heart. I should be happy for them. I am happy for them. I can’t think of anyone in this crazy, messed-up world that deserves it more. If you asked me half a year ago, would I sacrifice my own happiness for Mi’s, I would have said, yes, yes, go on, take it! I would have ripped my own heart out for him. But I didn’t know then, its true weight. I didn’t know how much I could feel. No wonder they’d been sneaking around.
I turn towards the fire escape. If I just grab my boots, and I can shoot away. They never need to know. I can pretend I never–
There is the small, loud noise of something vibrating, like the sound of a woodpecker. A pager? I hear Scarlet fumbling for it, swearing under her breath. She gets up, her words to Mi lost under the rustle of sheets and clothes. They spill out into the corridor before I can think to move.
“Ah, er, Ashe!” Mi finally registers my presence.
Scarlet appears behind me, still pulling on her trousers, too nervous to be embarrassed if she was ever the sort to begin with.
“It’s Sia,” she says. “She’s returned.”
Chapter 46
Sia received such a frosty reception from Rudy that she isn’t even in the base by the time we get there. She’s stalking the wilderness that skirts the old road, away from the prying eyes of the armed guards. She isn’t hard to locate; she’s been waiting for us.
“The city is crawling with guards,” she says, appearing as if out of nowhere. “I hope you have a good reason for calling me back here.”
“I do,” I
say. “Your sister, Fee. I met her. I know where she is. She wants to escape.”
Sia’s jaw tightens. “Well, that is a pretty good excuse,” she says. “And I do owe you one. What do you need?”
“You. And any other chimeras you happen to know the whereabouts of.”
Sia chuckles, raises two fingers to her lips, and lets out a series of whistles. Four, six, eight… a dozen other people emerge from the wilderness, dropping down from the trees, slipping out from behind bushes. It’s like they’ve become one with the forest.
“Will this do?” she asks.
I try not to look too pleased. “It’s a start.”
◆◆◆
Our numbers more than doubled, we locate Abi and the others, and take them to the Infirmary where Dell is hiding. There’s plenty of space, it’s rarely patrolled as the guards are afraid of catching something, and everyone is just as keen as Dell was to sample the delights of hot water. According to Sia, the group of them have a base in the wilderness not far from Auros, where she was living before the assault on the original Institute. It’s well-hidden and spacious, but lacking in common comforts. A safer, simpler life than the one we’ve been living. Lots of the other chimeras we rescued visit periodically, but several moved to the cities. More dangerous, but more comfortable. A different kind of freedom.
I fill Sia in on the other Institutes before I introduce her to Dell. She takes the news pretty well, and only has a few questions as we all squeeze into one of the Infirmary’s back rooms. It used to be an old community hall, but it’s been repurposed as a hospital. It’s as run-down as the rest of the slums, but it’s clean and dry and they have a lot of spare beds right now. They’re between outbreaks. Knowing they’re to be here for a while, some of the chimeras sort out a bathroom rota and begin trickling off to make the most of the facilities. A few others organise lunch, leaving the rest of us to plan.
With our numbers significantly greater than they were before, and the plans we drew up last night, Abi and Lili can finally get started on brainstorming some ideas, while Sia and I discuss arming ourselves. She has a small cache with her, but nothing near the amount of weaponry we’d need. There’s a warehouse near the wall that’s usually heavily stocked, and not too tightly guarded. I’ve broken in before with less back-up.
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