She’s bought into this whole place, but it doesn’t bother me that much. It’s Orion and Rhone that really do.
The way they watch her, nodding, whispering and scribbling notes, makes me feel a rage so deep that my body goes cold.
It’s like she’s an experiment, and they’re so damn proud of their work that they can’t take their eyes off of her. My anger pulses and festers, and suddenly, before I can get a grip on myself, everything goes cold, and dark.
I feel myself hit the floor as a memory or something takes over me, and when I try to fight it, the world fades away.
I’m not inside the Cave anymore.
I’m in that mirrored room again, staring at my own reflection. My face is younger and softer. But flux, my eyes are so cold they almost look black.
“You’re progressing quite well, Patient Zero,” someone says. When I turn around, it’s Lark, smiling at me like she’s proud. “Soon you will be able to go out into the world.”
“I am afraid,” I say, looking at my bare toes.
Lark’s smile falls away. “What did you say?”
“I am afraid. I do not want to leave here.” I’m wearing all white, but there’s a splash of color on my clothing that gets my attention. When I look down, I see red on my hands. Red on my sleeves.
It’s blood.
In the corner, there’s a body that lies crumpled on the floor. It’s a woman way older than me. Her neck is stuck at an awkward angle, and her hair’s splayed across her face. She’s bleeding.
“I killed her,” I say to Lark. “Why did I kill her?”
“You obeyed protocol,” Lark says, but instead of smiling at me, she looks...tired. Or sad. It’s impossible to tell. “Come here, Patient Zero.” She makes me sit down in front of her and tell her how I feel.
“Did the woman deserve to die?” I point at the body. I stand up to move closer to it. “What did she do to deserve to die?”
“Stay where you are, Patient Zero.”
“I don’t want to.” I know I should probably listen. But I feel like I’m strong enough that I don’t have to, so I go over to the body, push her hair from her face so I can look at her eyes.
The pain is horrible.
A shockwave of electricity.
I whirl around. Lark is pushing that awful red button in her hand. It causes pain in my head. Pain behind my eyes.
I scream. I drop to the floor.
“You need to listen,” Lark tells me. She puts the button back into her lab coat. “You need to obey.”
“I’m afraid,” I tell her. I’m shaking, but the pain is gone.
A woman’s voice comes over a loud speaker, crackling in my ears. It sounds like Lark. But darker.
“He shouldn’t be speaking like this. We’ve been pushing 60 watts. He shouldn’t have feelings, not when it’s turned on this strong.”
“And yet he does, sister,” Lark says, looking at me. “It’s fascinating.” She takes me by the shoulders and pulls me close. “He’s stronger than the others. He’s special. Just think of what he’ll be able to do someday. Think of what we’ll be able to use him for. . . . ”
The memory is sucked away. I see Meadow, kneeling over me, feel her shaking me. I try to call out to her, but my body feels so weak.
My eyes fall closed.
I sleep.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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CHAPTER 73
MEADOW
Zephyr does not wake for hours.
I sit beside the cot Rhone brought for him, studying the articles about my mother that Orion gave me. A whole box of them.
My mother was 19 when she married my father.
She was 21 when she had Koi, and 26 when she had me, and even though I know all of these things, have always known them, I feel like she is a stranger. That this is the story of someone else’s mother, not mine.
She was 17 when she discovered a cure for the common cold, right after her parents died from the Plague. Teenaged Einstein, the caption reads. She was 20 when she created the Cure, which held the nanites, and was released all over the country in the water.
She was 26, the same age she was when I was born, when she created the Murder Complex, but the information is not printed in ink. The details are scribbled in pen inside a notebook. I think by Orion. She talks about how the original citizens of the Shallows were tricked into getting their Pins. Extra nanites. A lie. People were so foolish to believe them.
But I guess they were desperate for rations, desperate for a place that they thought would be safe.
By the time I am finished looking through the papers, I feel sick.
Finally, Zephyr wakes up.
His eyes flutter open, and I am so relieved that I fall on top of him, press him into a hug that is tighter than I meant it to be. He gasps, but wraps his arms around me anyway.
“I thought you were dying, you ChumHead,” I say into his ear. His hair is soaked with sweat and sticks to his forehead. I brush it back and bury my face in his shoulder. “I thought . . . you were gone.”
“I feel like a million Creds,” Zephyr says to me, joking, but I can tell something is wrong. “I promise, Meadow. Hey. Look at me.”
He pushes me off, and we sit side by side on the cot. “I saw something. Or dreamed it. I think it was a memory.”
“Of what?” I ask. His face is white, almost as pale as those who live down here.
“I was with your mom,” he says, wide-eyed as a child. “I was younger, in this room inside of the Leech Headquarters, I think. And she was punishing me when I wouldn’t listen.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I cannot picture my mother hurting anyone, ever. Especially not Zephyr.
“But that’s not the point.” He shakes his head. “There was someone watching us. A woman. She said I was stronger than I should have been. Whatever it is, some system or something, was on . . . and I was disobeying your mother. I heard your mom call her sister.”
There is a whistle behind us, as a figure steps out of the shadows. It is a girl, younger than me by the look of her. She is thin and dark-skinned, her cheeks hollowed. Her hair hangs in dreadlocks just past her shoulders, and on her arms are black horizontal lines, tattoos that run from her wrists to her elbows. “So it’s true,” she says, looking at Zephyr. Her voice is sweet, like a melody. “You’re really as great as they say you are.”
“Um . . . excuse me?” Zephyr asks.
“Sometimes you get the best information from people when they think no one’s around. I saw your little episode over there. You dropped like a dead fly. Let me guess. You had a flashback?” She approaches us, sits down cross-legged on the floor in front of the cot. There are black tattoos on her legs, too.
She sees me staring.
“Kill marks,” she says. “I tatted them myself. I’m a Zom, too. And I was a good one, apparently, before the Resistance found me.”
Zephyr breathes in fast. “We’re the same?”
“The same, but different. I’m like you, is what you should be saying.” She picks at her toenails and smiles up at Zephyr like he is on display. Almost like he is holy.
“You were in the first group they made. Around here we call you guys the Originals.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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CHAPTER 74
ZEPHYR
The Originals.
I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, not after everything I’ve discovered with Meadow. But I can’t help myself. “You’re lying,” I say.
The girl, whose name is Sketch, just laughs. “I’ve only met one of you guys before. She was a girl. Sweet thing, but she died a long time ago. She had flashbacks, too.”
“Do you have them?” Meadow asks. Then she looks at me, stares at me, like I’m some crazy Grave
r or something.
“Nope. Sorry,” Sketch says. “Only the first Zoms do. It’s a glitch in the system, maybe. Or could be I’ve been hit in the head one too many times. I barely remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. And in case you’re wondering, it was a rat.”
She reminds me of Talan.
Talan.
Skitz, I hope the Leeches don’t do anything to Talan.
“How do you know he’s one of the first?” Meadow asks Sketch.
“Cuz we’ve all studied the history,” Sketch says. She spits on the ground, just misses my foot. A real lady. “I was a Third Gen. They fixed all the kinks by my time. But you, dude, you’ve got a screwed-up brain in there, don’t you?”
I chew on my lip. I stare at her.
“Someday, I’ll get my hands on that psychopath Creator,” Sketch says, then looks at Meadow. “No offense.”
Meadow shrugs, but says nothing.
“So they told you what we have to do, right?” Sketch asks me. Her eyes are this really weird shade of yellow, like a cat’s. “We’ve gotta go in there and fight off the Protector. The Protector, dude. The one who guards the Motherboard.”
Protector. Not Protectors. “And wait . . . you’re going?”
“Of course I am. I’m going to shut that Board down, even if I die trying.” Sketch laughs. She stands up and brushes off her tattooed thighs. “It’s a good thing your girlfriend is such a skilled fighter. Because word is you fight like a kid. We’ve only got a day to get you prepared. I don’t think you realize what we’re up against.”
An hour later, I’m surrounded by a ring of Resistance members, looking like the biggest ChumHead in the history of the Shallows.
Everybody’s shouting my name. And they’re laughing at me, sometimes so hard they can’t even breathe.
I hit the cave floor.
Again and again.
“Stop wasting your energy!” Meadow yells. “Swift motions, Zephyr. Choose your target and focus only on it.”
I haul myself to my feet and ready my body for her attack. But this time, when she lunges, I’m more prepared. I drop to the ground and roll sideways, away from her. When she turns, I kick out my feet and make her crash down beside me. Everyone cheers, and Sketch screams something vulgar.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Orion and Rhone. They don’t look impressed at all.
Meadow smiles. “Better.” Dried blood speckles her face, and it sort of makes me feel sick that I’ve been trying to beat the skitz out of her. But she looks like she hasn’t been this happy in years. She’s grinning like a crazy person. “Zephyr, look at your body. You’re all muscle, and you’re fast. Somewhere inside you know how to do this. Now do it again.”
Again and again, I screw up. I try to attack, but her instincts are way too quick. She avoids every punch, sinks more than a few of her own in my gut, and soon, I’m on the ground, heaving for air like some dying fish.
One day. One day, to prepare myself. They should’ve given me months.
This is totally impossible. It’s humiliating. I’m an Original, and I fight like a little girl. “This isn’t working.” I say. “There isn’t enough time!”
Sketch pushes through the laughing spectators until she’s at Meadow’s side. They both stare down at me.
“Muscle memory, dude,” Sketch says. “All the Zoms have it, but it’s deep down in your brain. Pull it out. They did this to you. Now use it.”
Sketch extends a hand and pulls me to my feet. It’s worth a shot to listen to her, I guess. I close my eyes as she circles around me. I tell myself I’ve got to hang on to her every word, and focus.
“You know you’re a murderer, Zephyr. So prove it. Try to kill me.”
“Stop it.” I clench my fists.
“You’ve done it before,” Sketch hisses. “You can do it again. Try to hurt me. Try to kill me, Zephyr.”
“I said stop.” The hair on my arms starts to stand on end.
“Make yourself feel something. Get angry! Do it!” Her fist connects with my jaw, and I stagger backward. Flux, she’s strong. I focus on how bad it hurts, letting the pain fuel me like fire.
When it starts to throb, I feel something different.
Fury.
I turn and run for her. Sketch’s mouth spreads into a grin just before I slam her body into the floor. Everything around us fades away. My muscles take over, and everything clicks into place. I’m making all the right moves, taking all the right steps, blocking her kicks and throws like I’ve been training for this fight my whole life.
The crowd is cheering me on, trading Sketch’s name for mine. It feels so good to hear it, and I fight like my life’s on the line. Someone throws Sketch a knife, and the mood changes. I trade anger for hatred, move faster than I’ve ever moved before, as Sketch starts swiping at the air. The knife skims close, and the tip of it slices my arm open.
“Not so fast now, are you, Zero?”
Meadow watches me with her eyes on fire, her fists clenched.
I have to win. I’ve got to prove myself to this girl.
I reach for everything from the past, everything that’s inside of me, and suddenly I feel myself changing. I see flashes of moments from long ago. The mirrored room, an opponent that’s dressed in white, like me. I see a man, training me to make strong punches, take even breaths, and move on the balls of my feet. There’s a woman, spraying my wounds, fixing me up only to send me right back out again. I feel pain when Lark pushes the red button every time I lose a fight, and I feel pleasure when she pushes the blue button every time I win. I hear my name, Patient Zero, over and over and over.
Suddenly I’m fighting with grace, like the battle is a dance. I see Meadow’s face in the corner. Her mouth drops open, her gray eyes go wide. I strike Sketch’s throat with my fist. She coughs, sputters for air, staggers backward. I slip my arm over her wrist, twist it, and laugh when her knife clatters to the ground.
“Get her, Zephyr, get her!” Meadow’s screaming, and I have the knife in my hand.
I set a trip with my foot and push Sketch to the ground. She cries out, furious, but before she gets the chance to stand up I’m right on top of her, straddling her with the knife pressed to her throat.
Her yellow eyes are wild.
“Good,” she says. “Very good.”
There’s something dark in me. It wants me to push the knife right through Sketch’s throat. But Meadow starts cheering. I look at her face, and the knife falls out of my hand.
I stand up and disappear down one of the tunnels. Then I throw up everything in my stomach before I collapse against the cold, wet walls.
“You did great,” Meadow says later that night, as she chains me up just a few paces away from the others like me. “You’re ready.”
Meadow sits across from me, wiping the blood from my mostly healed wounds. “They’ll do whatever they can to stop us, you know,” she says.
“I don’t think I care anymore.”
She found clean water somewhere. It feels good on my skin.
“I feel like I can protect you now,” I say. “I feel like when we go in there tomorrow, we’re going to be okay. We’ll make it okay, together.”
It’s a long time before she answers. When she does, she speaks so soft it’s not even a whisper. “Did you ever think that . . . maybe it’s not you they want? Or my family?”
“What do you mean?”
A fire nearby lights up the scars on her arms and legs. When she looks back up at me, my heart almost stops. There’s something I’ve never seen before in her eyes.
Fear.
“They took them,” Meadow says. Her voice cracks. “They took my family. But they didn’t take me. And I think I know why.”
I reach out to her, but she pulls away. “It’s just because they couldn’t find you, Meadow. I kept you safe.”
“You shouldn’t have!” She hisses. She is so angry that I look away. “They want me, Zephyr. Not you, not my family . . . me.”
&
nbsp; I wait a minute for her to calm down. “You don’t know that,” I say. How could she? All we’ve done so far is run blind. We don’t really know anything at all.
“I see the way Rhone and Orion look at me. You don’t think I’ve heard the whispers? Everyone knows something about me that I don’t.”
“Skitz, Meadow, you’re Lark Woodson’s daughter. That’s kind of a big deal.”
“Maybe so,” Meadow says. “But my father told me something in the Graveyard. He told me that there’s a person out there who keeps trying to put my name into the lottery system . . . to get me killed, I guess to get back at my mother.”
I close my eyes and let her words settle. Nothing should surprise me anymore, but this does. “So my dreams about you . . . it’s because I’m the one who was chosen to kill you . . . because of this person.”
She nods.
“Well . . . then that settles it, Meadow. There’s nothing wrong with you,” I say. “You’re perfect. It’s this crazy person that’s the screwed up one.”
Her eyes snap to mine. “Would you stop with all of that? This isn’t a fairy tale. This is real life, and right now, Zephyr, something is wrong. I’m going in alone.” She stands, checks her dagger, and gives me one last look. Her eyes are dead. “If I turn myself in, they’ll let my family go.”
“Are you insane?” I try to leap to my feet, but of course I can’t move. “What, you think if you just . . . show up, they’ll smile and hand you your sister, Meadow? No. We’ve got a job to do. We have to shut the Motherboard down, and end all of this skitz for good.”
I hold her gaze. I’m not going to let go of this girl.
Not ever.
“You think we can just walk in there, kill one person, and end the Murder Complex? It’s ridiculous. There’s still the Perimeter, Zephyr. It’s going to keep everyone stuck in here forever. No one will die for a long time, even if we shut the Murder Complex down, and then the world will keep growing, and children will starve, and . . . oh, this is insane! We won’t make it out of Headquarters alive. We’ve been lucky so far. We’ll go in there tomorrow and we’ll die. And my family will die. And you will, too. All of this will have been for nothing.”
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