Defy Me

by Tahereh Mafi

“I will,” I whisper. “I promise I will. But first I’m going to get you out of here.”

  Rage, hot and violent, sends me reeling. Emmaline’s anger is sharp and terrifying, and a resounding

  NO

  fills my brain.

  I go still. Confused.

  “What do you mean?” I say. “I have to help you get out of here. We’ll escape together. I have friends—healers—who can restore y—”

  NO

  And then, in a flash—

  She fills my mind with an image so dark I think I might be sick.

  “No,” I say, my voice shaking. “I won’t do it. I’m not going to kill you.”

  Anger, hot, ferocious anger, attacks my mind. Image after image assaults me, her failed suicide attempts, her inability to turn her own powers against herself, the infinite fail-safes Max and Evie put in place to make sure Emmaline couldn’t take her own life, and that she couldn’t harm theirs—

  “Emmaline, please—”

  HELP

  “There has to be another way,” I say desperately. “This can’t be it. You don’t have to die. We can get through this together.”

  She bangs her open palm against the glass. Tremors rock her emaciated body.

  Already

  dying

  I step forward, press my hands to her prison. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” I say, the words broken. “There has to be another way. Please. I want my sister back. I want you to live.”

  More anger, hot and wild, begins to bloom in my mind and then—

  a spike of fear.

  Emmaline goes rigid in her tank.

  Coming

  I look around, steeling myself. Adrenaline spikes in my veins.

  Wait

  Emmaline has wrapped her arms around her body, her face pinched in concentration. I can still feel her with an immediacy so intimate it feels almost like her thoughts are my own.

  And then, unexpectedly—

  My shackles pop open.

  I spin around as they fall to the floor with a rich clatter. I rub at my aching wrists, my ankles. “How did you—?”

  Coming

  I nod.

  “Whatever happens today,” I whisper, “I’m coming back for you. This isn’t over. Do you hear me? Emmaline, I won’t let you die here.”

  For the first time, Emmaline seems to relax.

  Something warm and sweet fills my head, affection so unexpected it pricks my eyes.

  I fight back the emotion.

  Footsteps.

  Fear has fled my body. I feel unusually calm. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. There’s strength in my bones, strength in my mind. And now that the cuffs are off, my powers are back on and a familiar feeling is surging through me; it’s like being joined by an old friend.

  I meet Evie’s eyes as she walks through the door.

  She’s already pointing a gun at me. Not a gun—something that looks like a gun. I don’t know what’s in it.

  “What are you doing here?” she says, her voice only slightly hysterical. “What have you done?”

  I shake my head.

  I can’t look at her face anymore without feeling blind rage. I can’t even think her name without feeling a violent, potent, animalistic need to murder her with my bare hands. Evie Sommers is the worst kind of human being. A traitor to humanity. An unadulterated sociopath.

  “What have you done?” she says again, this time betraying her fear. Her panic. The gun trembles in her fist. Her eyes are wide, crazed, darting from me to Emmaline, still trapped in the tank behind me.

  And then—

  I see it. I see the moment she realizes I’m not wearing my manacles.

  Evie goes pale.

  “I haven’t done anything,” I say softly. “Not yet.”

  Her gun falls, with a clatter, to the floor.

  Unlike Paris, my mother isn’t stupid. She knows there’s no point trying to shoot me. She created me. She knows what I’m capable of. And she knows—I can see it in her eyes—she knows I’m about to kill her, and she knows there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

  Still, she tries.

  “Ella,” she says, her voice unsteady. “Everything we did—everything we’ve ever done—was to try to help you. We were trying to save the world. You have to understand.”

  I take a step forward. “I do understand.”

  “I just wanted to make the world a better place,” she says. “Don’t you want to make the world a better place?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I do.”

  She almost smiles. A small, broken breath escapes her body.

  Relief.

  I take two swift, running steps and punch her through the chest, ribs breaking under my knuckles. Her eyes widen and she chokes, staring at me in stunned, paralyzed silence. She coughs and blood spatters, hot and thick, across my face. I turn away, spitting her blood out of my mouth, and by the time I look back, she’s dead.

  With one last tug, I rip her heart out of her body.

  Evie falls to the floor with a heavy thud, her eyes cold and glassy. I’m still holding my mother’s heart, watching it die in my hands, when a familiar voice calls out to me.

  Thank you

  Thank you

  Thank you

  Warner

  I realize, upon quitting the crime scene, that I have no idea where I am. I stand in the middle of the hallway outside the room within which I just murdered my father, and try to figure out my next moves. I’m nearly naked. No socks. Completely barefoot. Far from ideal.

  Still, I need to keep moving.

  If only.

  I don’t make it five feet before I feel the familiar pinch of a needle. I feel it—even as I try to fight it—I feel it as a foreign chemical enters my body. It’s only a matter of time before it pulls me under.

  My vision blurs.

  I try to beat it, try to remain standing, but my body is weak. After two weeks of near starvation, constant poisoning, and violent exhaustion, I’ve run out of reserves. The last dregs of my adrenaline have left me.

  This is it.

  I fall to the floor, and the memories consume me.

  I gasp as I’m returned to consciousness, taking in great lungfuls of air as I sit up too fast, my head spinning.

  There are wires taped to my temples, my limbs, the plastic ends pinching the soft hinges of my arms and legs, pulling at the skin on my bare chest. I rip them off, causing great distress to the monitors nearby. I yank the needle out of my arm and toss it to the floor, applying pressure to the wound for a few seconds before deciding to let it bleed. I get to my feet, spinning around to assess my surroundings, but still feel off-balance.

  I can only guess at who must’ve shot me with a tranquilizer; even so, I feel no urgency to panic. Killing my father has instilled in me an extraordinary serenity. It’s a perverse, horrible thing to celebrate, but to murder my father was to vanquish my greatest fear. With him dead, anything seems possible.

  I feel free.

  Still, I need to focus on where I am, on what’s happening. I need to be forming a plan of attack, a plan of escape, a plan to rescue Ella. But my mind is being pulled in what feels like a hundred different directions.

  The memories are growing more intense by the minute.

  I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I don’t know how long this barrage will last or how much more will be uncovered, but the emotional revelations are beginning to take their toll on me.

  A few months ago, I knew I loved Ella. I knew I felt for her what I’d never felt before for anyone. It felt new and precious and tender.

  Important.

  But every day—every minute—of the last couple of weeks I’ve been bombarded by memories of her I never even knew I had. Moments with her from years ago. The sound of her laughter, the smell of her hair, the look in her eyes when she smiled at me for the first time. The way it felt to hold her hand when everything was new and unknown—

  Three years ago.

 
; How could it be possible that I touched her like that three years ago? How could we have known then, without actually knowing why, that we could be together? That she could touch me without hurting me? How could any of these moments have been ripped from my mind?

  I had no idea I’d lost so much of her. But then, I had no idea there’d been so much to lose.

  A profound, painful ache has rooted inside of me, carrying with it the weight of years. Being apart from Juliette—Ella—has always been hard, but now it seems unsurvivable.

  I’m being slowly decimated by emotion.

  I need to see her. To hold her. To bind her to me, somehow. I won’t believe a word my father said until I see her and speak with her in person.

  I can’t give up. Not yet.

  To hell with what happened between us back on base. Those events feel like they happened lifetimes ago. Like they happened to different people. Once I find her and get her to safety I will find a way to make things right between us. It feels like something long dead inside of me is being slowly returned to life—like my hopes and dreams are being resuscitated, like the holes in my heart are being slowly, carefully mended. I will find her. And when I do, I will find a way to move forward with her, by my side, forever.

  I take a deep breath.

  And then I get to my feet.

  I brace myself, expecting the familiar sting of my broken ribs, but the pain in my side is gone. Gingerly, I touch my torso; the bruising has disappeared. I touch my face and I’m surprised to discover that my skin is smooth, clean-shaven. I touch my hair and find it’s been returned to its original length—exactly as it was before I had to cut it all off.

  Strange.

  Still, I feel more like myself than I have in a long time, and I’m quietly grateful. The only thing bothering me is that I’m wearing nothing but a dressing grown, under which I’m completely naked.

  I’m sick of being naked.

  I want my clothes. I want a proper pair of pants. I want—

  And then, as if someone has read my mind, I notice a fresh set of clothes on a nearby table. Clothes that look exactly my size.

  I pick up the sweater. Examine it.

  These are my actual clothes. I know these pieces. Recognize them. And if that wasn’t enough, my initials—AWA—are monogrammed on the cuff of the sweater. This was no accident. Someone brought my clothes here. From my own closet.

  They were expecting me.

  I dress quickly, grateful for the clean outfit regardless of the circumstances, and I’m nearly done with the straps on my boots when someone walks in.

  “Max,” I say, without lifting my head. Carefully, I step on the needle I’d tossed earlier to the floor. “How are you?”

  He laughs out loud. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I recognized the rhythm of your footfalls.”

  He goes quiet.

  “Don’t bother trying to deny it,” I say, hiding the syringe in my hand as I sit up. I meet his eyes and smile. “I’ve been listening to your heavy, uneven gait for the last two weeks.”

  Max’s eyes widen. “I’m impressed.”

  “And I appreciate the clean shave,” I say, touching my face.

  He laughs again, more softly this time. “You were pretty close to dead when I brought you in here. Imagine my surprise to find you nearly naked, severely dehydrated, half-starved, vitamin-deficient. You had three broken ribs. Your father’s blood all over your hands.”

  “Three broken ribs? I thought it was two.”

  “Three broken ribs,” Max says, and nods. “And still, you managed to sever Paris’s carotid artery. Nicely done.”

  I meet his eyes. Max thinks this is funny.

  And then I understand.

  “He’s still alive, isn’t he?” I say.

  Max smiles wider. “Quite alive, yes. Despite your best efforts to murder him.”

  “That seems impossible.”

  “You sound irritated,” Max says.

  “I am irritated. That he survived is an insult to my skill set.”

  Max fights back another laugh. “I don’t remember you being so funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  But Max can’t wipe the smile off his face.

  “So you’re not going to tell me how he survived?” I say. “You’re just going to bait me?”

  “I’m waiting for my wife,” he says.

  “I understand. Does she help you sound out the big words?”

  Max’s eyebrows jump up his forehead. “Watch yourself, Aaron.”

  “Apologies. Please step out of my way.”

  “As I said, I’m waiting for my wife. She has something she wants to say to you.”

  I study him, looking closely at his face in a way I can’t remember ever having done. He has dark brown hair, light brown skin, and bright blue-green eyes. He’s aged well. On a different day, I might’ve even described his face as warm, friendly. But knowing now that he’s Ella’s father—I almost can’t believe I didn’t notice sooner. She has his eyes.

  I hear a second set of footsteps drawing nearer to the door. I expect to see Evie, Supreme Sommers, and instead—

  “Max, how long do you think it’ll take bef—”

  My father. His voice.

  I can hardly believe it.

  He stops, just inside the doorway, when he sees my face. He’s holding a bloodied towel to his throat. “You idiot,” he says to me.

  I don’t have a chance to respond.

  A sharp alarm sounds, and Max goes suddenly rigid. He glances at a monitor on the wall before looking back at my father.

  “Go,” Anderson says. “I can handle him.”

  Max glances at me just once before he disappears.

  “So,” I say, nodding at my father’s face, his healing wound. “Are you going to explain?”

  He merely stares at me.

  I watch, quietly, as he uses his free hand to pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He wipes the remaining blood from his lips, refolds the handkerchief, and tucks it back inside his pocket.

  Something between us has changed.

  I can feel it. Can feel the shift in his attitude toward me. It takes a minute to piece together the various emotional cues long enough to understand, but when it finally hits me, it hits me hard.

  Respect.

  For the first time in my life, my father is staring at me with something like respect. I tried to kill him, and instead of being angry with me, he seems pleased. Maybe even impressed.

  “You did good work back there,” he says quietly. “It was a strong throw. Solid.”

  It feels strange to accept his compliment, so I don’t.

  My father sighs.

  “Part of the reason I wanted custody of those healer twins,” he says finally, “was because I wanted Evie to study them. I wanted her to replicate their DNA and braid it into my own. Healing powers, I realized, were extremely useful.”

  A sharp chill goes up my spine.

  “But I didn’t have them under my control for as long as I wanted,” he says. “I was only able to extract a few blood samples. Evie did the best she could with the time we had.”

  I blink. Try to control the expression on my face. “So you have healing powers now?”

  “We’re still working on it,” he says, his jaw tight. “It’s not yet perfect. But it was enough that I was able to survive the wounds to the head just long enough to be shipped to safety.” He smiles a bitter smile. “My feet, on the other hand, didn’t make it.”

  “How unfortunate,” I lie.

  I test the weight of the syringe in my hand. I wonder how much damage it could do. It’s not substantial enough to do much more than stun, but a carefully angled attack could result in temporary nerve pain that would buy me a sizable amount of time. But then, so might a single, precise stab in the eye.

  “Operation Synthesis,” my father says sharply.

  I look up. Surprised.

  “You’re ready, Aaron.” His gaze is
steady. “You’re ready for a real challenge. You’ve got the necessary fire. The drive. I’m seeing it in your eyes for the first time.”

  I’m too afraid to speak.

  Finally, after all these years, my father is giving me praise. He’s telling me I’m capable. As a child, it was everything I’d ever wanted.

  But I’m not a child anymore.

  “You’ve seen Emmaline,” my father says. “But you haven’t seen her recently. You don’t know what state she’s in.”

  I wait.

  “She’s dying,” he says. “Her body isn’t strong enough to survive her mind or her environment, and despite Max and Evie’s every effort, they don’t know if there’s anything else they can do to help her. They’ve been working for years to prolong her life as much as possible, but they’ve reached the end of the line. There’s nothing left to do. She’s deteriorating at a rate they can no longer control.”

  Still, I say nothing.

  “Do you understand?” my father says to me. “Do you understand the importance of what I’m saying to you? Emmaline is not only a psychokinetic, but a telepath,” he says. “As her body deteriorates, her mind grows wilder. She’s too strong. Too explosive. And lately, without a strong enough body to contain her, she’s become volatile. If she’s not given a n—”

  “Don’t you dare,” a voice barks, loudly, into the room. “Don’t you dare say another word. You thickheaded fool.”

  I spin around, surprise catching in my throat.

  Supreme Commander Ibrahim. He seems taller than I remember him. Dark skin, dark hair. Angry.

  “It’s okay,” my father says, unbothered. “Evie has taken care of—”

  “Evie is dead,” Ibrahim says angrily. “We need to initiate the transfer immediately.”

  “What?” My father goes pale. I’ve never seen him pale. I’ve never seen him terrified. “What do you mean she’s dead?”

  Ibrahim’s eyes flash. “I mean we have a serious problem.” He glances at me. “This boy needs to be put back in isolation. We can’t trust any of them right now. We don’t know what she might’ve done.”

  And just as I’m trying to decide my next move, I hear a whisper at my ear.

  “Don’t scream,” she says.

  Nazeera.

  Juliette Ella

  I’m running for my life, bolting down hallways and up staircases. A low, insistent alarm has gone off, its high, piercing sound sending shocks of fear through me even as my feet pound the floor. I feel strong, steady, but I’m increasingly aware of my inability to navigate these snaking paths. I could see—could feel—Emmaline growing weaker as I left, and now, the farther I get from her, the dimmer our connection becomes. She showed me, in her memories, how Max and Evie slowly stripped her of control; Emmaline is more powerful than anyone, but now she can only use her powers on command. It took all her strength to push past the fail-safes long enough to use her strength at will, and now that her voice has retreated from my mind, I know she won’t be back. Not anytime soon. I have to figure out my own way out of here.