Into the Abyss

by Stefanie Gaither

  I can still keep up with it, of course.

  But not without causing a scene that will likely catch Josh’s attention as well.

  “Relax,” Seth says. “I’ve got a plan. I’ll be there in a second.”

  “You don’t have a second,” I say as Josh swings a leg over the bike and starts it with a twist of the handle.

  “Well, make me some seconds. Slow him down somehow, create a little chaos—you’re usually good at that sort of thing. You’ll just have to be subtle about it for once. Think you can manage that?”

  “Of course I can manage that.”

  “I’m just saying. If he realizes you’re the one causing trouble—”

  “I’ve got this, all right? Just hurry up and do whatever it is you’re planning on doing.”

  “Pushy.”

  I ignore this last comment, because suddenly there is no time to keep arguing, or to do anything except move. Josh pulls onto the street, and the second his eyes are fixed straight ahead, I start to run. Luckily, the traffic is heavy enough here that Josh isn’t moving fast enough to require much more than a jog to keep up—even as he’s darting in between cars and buses and trying to find a faster route.

  But keeping up isn’t enough.

  Somehow, I need to get in front of him without him seeing me. And then figure out how to stop traffic while remaining equally out of his sight.

  One thing at a time, I think as we approach another intersection. His light has just turned red, and as he slows to a stop, Josh slides his bike toward the shoulder of the road. It’s hard to tell from this side of the street, but it looks like there’s a narrow stretch of empty pavement ahead of him. He leans forward, like he’s sizing up the space and thinking about racing through it.

  To my left, I see the opening of an alleyway. I dash toward it, picking up full speed once I’m in and there are buildings rising up on either side, concealing me. I leap a wooden fence at the alley’s end and land in a pile of boxes and wooden pallets on the other side. I break through one of those pallets, and have to kick my way free of it before running on, clearing the rest of the building to my right and then careening around it to reach the intersection a block ahead of where Josh is still waiting.

  Not waiting for long, though.

  I haven’t even had a chance to take a deep breath before the traffic he’s in starts to move.

  Focus, I command myself. And my brain manages it. It takes in the sight of everything around me and processes it at lightning speed, running every possible scenario, every possible—

  There.

  I’ve spotted it: a fire hydrant, no more than ten feet away. I pull the hood of my sweatshirt up around my face as much as possible, and I run to it. Probably too fast, but I don’t care at this point—a few more seconds and I will have missed my opportunity.

  I reach the hydrant. Pretend I’ve dropped something, and go to pick it up. As I straighten, my hand falls on the nozzle pointing toward the road, and my fingers grip its cap as tightly as any wrench could.

  I twist it free.

  And in the same second, I turn and bolt from the scene, away from the sound of the pressurized water exploding and gushing onto the street. There’s a screech of tires, and then the sound of metal hitting metal, and all of it muffled by shouts and honks and the glug pump crash of shooting water. I slow down just long enough to glance back, to see that I’ve managed to bring traffic almost to a standstill.

  I don’t manage to find Josh before someone gets a hand on my arm from behind.

  I jerk loose, keep my face turned away with my other arm covering it, and I run for the alley.

  Footsteps pound behind me. Once I clear the fence in a single leap, though, they abruptly stop; if the people following had been wondering if they were dealing with a clone before, they won’t be now—but I’m hoping no one took enough notice of my face to connect it with my name. Likely they’ll just end up pinning this on one of the multitude of Huxley clones that have been wreaking havoc in their city.

  I circle back around to the intersection I left Josh at, slipping behind a bus that’s pulled up onto the side of the street with its caution lights blinking. Seth’s voice reaches me over the communicator a moment later.

  “Got him,” he says, and I am about to ask exactly how when I catch a flash of Josh’s red jacket. He’s past the intersection, weaving into the line of traffic that’s started to pull around the mess I created, and he is slowly, steadily, moving away from me. I take a few automatic steps forward. My focus is so intently on Josh that when something grazes my elbow, I don’t think to do anything beyond an automatic reaction; I just swing.

  Seth catches me by the wrist, but lets me go the second our eyes meet. “Easy, killer,” he says.

  “What do you mean, you got him?” I say with a nod toward Josh, who is almost out of sight now. “It looks like he got away to me.”

  “Let’s escape the scene of the crime first, how about? We need to keep moving, anyway; it won’t matter if we track Josh to wherever he’s going if we aren’t around to see what he’s doing when he gets there.”

  We move to a block parallel to the one we were on, and keep heading the same direction Josh disappeared into. Once we’re out of sight of the mess on Fifth Street, Seth pulls a tiny, odd-looking little gun from his coat pocket. Or at least I believe it’s a gun; there is a short barrel on it, and a button trigger on its underside; it has a screen across the top of it, though, and there is a map lit up on it, along with several blinking dots.

  “Grabbed this as sort of an afterthought when we were leaving the safe house,” Seth explains. “Good thing, right?”

  I watch the screen more closely, following the yellow dot as it turns right just as it reaches the old library building. We turn right too, and pick up our pace a little.

  “So, we’re the green dot, he’s the yellow?”

  “Or his bike is the yellow, at least,” Seth says. “I thought he might notice if I shot a tracker disk onto him. Hopefully he doesn’t ditch the bike anywhere.”

  “He won’t notice this disk on the bike?”

  “It’s, like, barely as big as the tip of your finger.”

  We follow the dot for the next fifteen minutes or so, and as I run, I am combing through the city map I’ve made in my mind’s memory. These past few weeks we’ve been plotting out possible locations where the CCA insurgents might have been meeting, based on rumors and information gathered by Jaxon and Catelyn and a few other people they trust, and on our own knowledge—or Seth’s knowledge, mostly—of the city’s nooks and crannies and landmarks. And when I compare that map of locations in my head to the one in Seth’s hand, I can already guess at Josh’s possible destination.

  “Do you think he’s heading for one of the river buildings?” I ask Seth. It’s a spot we pegged on the northwest corner of town—part of the old water-treatment plant there. Most of that plant is nonoperational now, replaced by the newer facilities a few miles upriver. One of the CCA women closest to Silas is in charge of keeping that old plant safe, and keeping the public out of it; that, combined with the relative seclusion of the spot and the dozens of buildings along the property, makes it seem like a distinct possibility for a meeting spot. A spot Josh has been heading steadily toward for the past five minutes or so.

  “Seems like it.” Almost as soon as Seth says it, though, he glances down at the screen, and then stops so quickly, I almost run into the back of him. “Or not,” he says.

  Because the yellow dot has turned around.

  It’s moving back toward us.

  “Looks like he’s changed his mind,” Seth says.

  I tense. “Do you think he realized he’s being followed?”

  “I doubt it,” Seth says. “Maybe the idiot’s just lost?”

  We hide all the same, ducking behind a brick wall of a nearby apartment complex, and wait. Less than a minute passes before we hear him go by, the hum of the bike in sync with the little dot roving up the screen. He dr
ives maybe a half a mile more before turning again.

  “Is he . . . ?” I trail off, and we both watch closer as Josh slows and then makes another right turn. I still don’t believe what I am seeing, though, or that he could actually be headed where I think he’s headed—not until he actually stops right outside of it.

  “Why in the world is he stopping at Huxley’s old lab?” I ask, staring at the screen as though there is some way I might be mistaken.

  But Seth sees it too.

  “No idea,” he says, “but I want to go find out for myself.”

  We break into a run, reach the metal fence that runs around the perimeter of Huxley’s property a few minutes later, hop over it, and then immediately shoot behind one of the many construction Dumpsters set up as part of the ongoing cleanup of the crumbling lab.

  Again, Josh is easy enough to spot. He hasn’t dared to get too close to the ruined building; he stands outside that security fence, maybe fifteen feet from us, in front of the main entry gate.

  And he is just . . . staring.

  He is completely still and all alone, his eyes vast and empty as they take in what’s left of the massive compound. I’m no longer concerned that he might notice us. Something tells me I could jump up and down in front of him, and in this moment, at least, he wouldn’t see me. He would just keep staring past me, searching for whatever it is he is trying to find in the destruction left behind.

  It’s different from the anxiety, the frown I saw on his face as he left headquarters. And it is so far from that smugness—that arrogance of his that was so easy to hate, to want to destroy—that it makes me uncomfortable.

  Or maybe it’s just this place that’s doing that.

  “You were right,” Seth says suddenly. I tear my eyes away from the awful emptiness on Josh’s face and follow Seth’s gaze instead. A truck is parked on the street a little ways back from Josh, and Silas Iverson himself is climbing out of it.

  “Right?” I repeat in a daze, because suddenly nothing seems right at all, and I’m not really sure why.

  “When you said we should follow Josh to get to his dad, I mean.”

  “Oh.”

  That’s why we’re here. We followed Josh. We’re collecting intelligence for President Cross, because she’s promised to help us if we do. We have a plan, just focus on the plan. . . .

  And I try. But even as the details of that plan reopen in my brain and I run through them over and over, my stare stays frozen on Josh. He and his father are discussing something now. I could probably pick up at least some of their conversation if I could center in on it, but every time I attempt to, that uneasiness from before threatens to overwhelm.

  A long few moments pass, and then Seth quietly says, “Is it just me, or does it sort of feel like we’re eavesdropping on an intimate family moment here? I’m kind of afraid they’re about to start hugging it out. Which I imagine will be incredibly awkward—like two evil robots embracing each other. Or like what I imagine hugging you would be like.”

  “I wouldn’t hug you if my very life depended on it, so you can stop imagining that.”

  “I can’t help it,” he says. “Maybe if you wouldn’t act so warm and overly friendly toward me all the time, I wouldn’t have that problem.”

  Our voices are quiet, weak, but we’re trying. Attacking the uneasiness, the uncertainty, with this silly banter that seems to have become our normal. But it doesn’t quite drive those things away this time.

  And Silas never embraces his son. He does grab him by the arm—but it’s only so he can pull Josh away from the gate, which he does with so much force that it’s almost painful to watch, because it is so clear, even to me, that Josh is not ready to leave whatever he came here for. Silas remains stern faced, though, as he directs his son into the passenger seat of the truck. Then he goes back and grabs the jet bike, loads it onto the bed, and gets in and drives away without so much as a glance beside him.

  We follow the tracker in silence, and eventually find that our earlier hunch was right: We end up by the river. And we stay there for hours, observing every person that comes and goes out of an unassuming little cinder-block building, and quietly discussing ways we might be able to better see and hear—and perhaps even record—exactly what they’re talking about.

  Other than that, we don’t say much. There are a few times when I think Seth might, but then he seems to understand that I am taking longer than normal to process this latest encounter with Josh, and so he leaves me to it.

  On the way back to the safe house, though, as we’re lying on our backs on top of a shuttle as it speeds along among the city’s lights, I suddenly can’t keep quiet anymore.

  “What was he doing there, do you think?”

  I don’t have to elaborate; I know Seth understands my question, though it takes him a long time to answer. “Just trying to deal with old memories, maybe,” he finally ventures.

  “What memories, exactly? Was he there during the fight? During the fire?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” He looks reluctant to keep going, but I can tell he has more he could say.

  “You’re keeping something from me,” I say, frowning. “What do you know?”

  “I know lots of things,” he says. “I’m sort of a genius, if you haven’t noticed.”

  “Don’t make me force it out of you.”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “Sorry, Ice Queen, but your threats don’t work on me. You should know that by now.”

  I’m annoyed, but I’m also not one to beg. So I turn away from him and close my eyes. A few minutes later, though, he apparently tires of the silence, because he interrupts it again. “His mom was there,” he says. “Her name was Michelle, I think.”

  I don’t move. I don’t say anything. I just take her name and I hoard it away with all the other words and secrets I’ve collected since waking up, all those other things I’ve felt like I should keep, even though I am not sure what to do with them.

  • • •

  We spend the next several weeks running more and more intelligence-gathering missions like these, until we know the name and face of almost every one of the CCA members who call themselves purists, until we have an idea of their fighting capability and their numbers. Numbers that reach at least a third of the existing CCA, by the time everyone is accounted for. Numbers that are enough to stage an uprising that might actually end well for them, if the cards fell just right.

  Not once during all those weeks, on any of those missions, does Seth or I mention Josh. I keep replaying that conversation from the shuttle, though. And I don’t sleep much—even less so than normal—but when I do, I keep finding myself waking up at odd hours of the night, my heart pounding, my skin glistening with sweat.

  Nightmares, Seth guesses when I mention it to him.

  But I don’t remember what happened in them, any more than I remember the life of the Violet Benson who came before.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Almost exactly two months after they started their project, Leah bursts into the living room where Seth and I are sitting and breathlessly declares: “We’ve done it.” Then she gives a little bow, darts back into the kitchen, and drags a much more calm-looking Angie back into the room with her. “Tell them,” she says, which causes Angie to give a happy little sigh.

  “She’s right,” Angie says, and I can tell she’s trying to appear modest behind her smile. “At least as far as we can test it, I think. There are a few things outside of our control that its success still hinges on, but I believe we’ve given it our best shot.”

  “So, on to the next phase then?” I say.

  “It’s all business with you, isn’t it?” Leah says with a soft laugh. “Personally, I’m going to celebrate for a few hours first.”

  I ignore her, walking over and grabbing the laptop from the desk in the corner instead of answering. I would celebrate, maybe—I’ll admit that her words caused a rush of relief, and something like elation, to flood through me—but I don’t
have time to let these things carry me away.

  I didn’t much care, in the beginning of this, about what was happening in the CCA. Not outside of how it might have been putting Catelyn at risk, anyway.

  But with every name we’ve collected and given to President Cross, I’ve felt the tension between these people growing as if it were my own, and now I can’t help but worry about that tension snapping.

  Soon.

  Exactly how soon is frustratingly hard to say, though. We haven’t had any direct conversations with the president herself; she’s being watched too closely now, with so many eager to find more of her weaknesses to expose. And the ones closest to her—including Jaxon, and Catelyn by association—are being scrutinized almost as closely. So we’ve been relying mostly on Zach, again, to quietly relay that information we’ve gathered. Our conversations with him are always quick and direct, though, for safety’s sake. We’ve talked just enough for us to have gleaned that Cross is using our intel to launch investigations, and that several of the insurgents have been dismissed as a result of it.

  I can’t help feeling it isn’t enough, though.

  The violent clone activations are continuing in the city. Last week there was yet another attack on the CCA headquarters. So for every extremist Cross dismisses, it isn’t hard to believe that another will rise in his place, spurred on by these things.

  And part of my plan hinges on the president using her organization’s power to help us, on there being enough CCA members left who we can possibly sway to our side.

  So no, I am not wasting time celebrating.

  “I’m still working on teaching her how to party,” I hear Seth saying to Leah behind me. I roll my eyes as the laptop screen blinks to life. I navigate to the folder that contains the security diagrams of Huxley’s former lab, which Tori obtained for us, and I open them. I don’t need them personally, because I’ve already seen them once before; but it’s easier to discuss things with the normal ones among us if we have pictures to point at.