Into the Abyss

by Stefanie Gaither

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “Wait a second!” I dive on his arm just in time to stop him from jerking the plug out of the generator. “We’ve already done all this.” I jab a finger at the broken screen, which indicates less than five minutes left in the installation. “I’m not leaving until we run that program and at least give it a chance to work.”

  “Fine.” He rips his arm free of the death lock I have wrapped around it, and backs away from me. “Stay. But I’m not waiting for you.” And he is gone in the next instant, before I have time to argue, or even to ask him how to properly finish the installation job he’s started.

  The minutes crawl by. I pass them by staring at the video communicator, silently willing it to crackle back to life. It never does, though. By the time the computer finishes its task, my fingers are so unsteady, and my pulse racing so fast, that I can barely focus enough to figure out how to securely eject the external drive we loaded the program from.

  I am not used to this sort of anxiety, and I don’t like it. Not the way it makes my movements so insecure, or the way it feels like it is edging closer to fear—which is an emotion I have never wanted anything to do with. Too many humans spend too much time being afraid of too many things, and fear too often leads to hate. I know it does. I haven’t forgotten the fearful way so many of the CCA backed away from me on the day I woke up. I never wanted to become like those humans.

  So instead of feeling fear, I force myself to think only of the movements required to pack up everything we’ve brought. Mechanical movements. Simple movements. One object after another, into the two bags, and then both bags over either of my shoulders. Then a glance at the building map Angela provided us. A route, memorized. The way back out.

  There is no backing out now.

  The thought chases me as I run. I can’t escape it any more than I can escape that anxiety that is collecting in the pit of my stomach and making every step I take feel too heavy, too slow.

  I am better off alone, I try telling myself again. Over and over, I am thinking that, trying to convince myself that I actually believe it. Trying to believe that if I wanted to, I could just forget them all.

  But already I regret not leaving when Seth did.

  Months ago I would have been glad for it, because then I could have run the other direction, as slowly and heavily as I wanted, without having to explain myself to him. Without having to explain to him how I am not anybody’s savior. Now, though, I wish I were somehow already back at the house, that I could somehow know that Angie and the others are safe.

  There is no more denying it: I want to be alone—to have never met any of them—but what I actually am is afraid. I think this fear is different, though. It isn’t the hate-fueling kind I know so well.

  So maybe fear doesn’t always have to fuel hate.

  And maybe how you handle fear is what determines whether you become a human or a monster.

  I burst into the cold morning, into a steel and glass city alive with people. I turn heads as I run. I am obviously entirely too fast to be human, and even more suspicious looking in my dark clothes, with both overstuffed backpacks bouncing around me. But nobody tries to stop me. They just get out of my path, the way most people of this city have learned to do with clones.

  I care more than I should about that—about the way they nearly trip over themselves to avoid me. I care about it more than I did when I first woke up. I know the people of this city don’t realize what I have been trying to do these past few months. That they still don’t realize that I am different from the clones that fuel their nightmares, so it isn’t as though I could hold it against them.

  Still, it makes me wish I had invisibility to go along with my super strength and speed.

  And perhaps Seth wishes for the same thing, because when I run past that old elementary school we parked at, I see that he took the car, even though he almost certainly could have run a quicker, more direct route out of the city.

  At least if he is driving, I should be able to catch up.

  The city is a haze of early morning noise, a blur of shapes, as I sprint through it. I follow the landmarks I’ve memorized until I find my way back to the familiar gravel road that weaves close to the house, and then to the dirt turnoff that leads to the secluded grove Tori parks her car in.

  The spot here is empty too, with still no sign of Seth.

  I race on through the woods alone.

  A quarter mile from the house, I hear vehicle doors slamming. Tires screeching. I see flashes of white through the trees a moment later—white trucks speeding away across the open field ahead. Clouds of dust billow up behind them. They come dangerously close to the woods as they race back onto the main road. I drop low, out of any possible sight lines, and then I creep the rest of the way to the tree line.

  Once there, I wait.

  Because from here I can see a half dozen more vehicles parked across the field. And just beyond where they’ve parked, down the hill, through more trees, is the house.

  I swing wide through the field, far enough to avoid detection while still keeping the vehicles within sight. There are no people in them. No one outside them either. As I sneak closer to the house, though, I see where at least some of those people have gone: Two of them stand in the window closest to the front door, their faces obscured in a glare of sunlight. They are tense, unmoving. Waiting.

  They must be waiting for us.

  Why else would Angie have told us not to come back?

  I move closer. Inch by inch, behind one wide tree trunk and then to the next, and the next after that, all the way to within just a matter of feet from the back of the house. All the while my instincts are screaming at me, warning me how stupid this is, getting so close when I have no idea how outnumbered I will be if they spot me.

  But I am peering into the back window before I can talk myself out of it.

  I see faces I recognize.

  The faces of at least a dozen CCA members—members Seth and I have seen, countless times, at the revolutionaries’ meetings throughout the city. I know all their names, because we gave them all to President Cross.

  They’re still in CCA trucks, though, and I’m not sure what that means.

  The floorboards inside the house groan. Footsteps, coming closer. I slink back into the bushes on the far edge of the yard but don’t take my eyes off the window. My hand reaches into the bag on my left, finds the gun there. I think of the ashes I swept from my clothing back at the old laboratory. That complete, total destruction.

  Of how easy it would be to aim from here.

  I see the house’s old, splintering, dry wood siding, and I wonder how quickly I could send it up in flames. If it would be quick enough to turn everything and everyone inside into ash and nothingness. So many of them were among my worst tormentors when I was at the CCA, and I want those tormentors to become nothing, to be unrecognizable by the time I am through.

  It seems like a fitting punishment for making me feel like I was nothing.

  There is no way of knowing, though, what’s happened to Angie and the others staying at the house. I don’t see them from here, but they could still be inside. I keep hearing Angie’s voice in my head, not just the warning she hurriedly gave us but all the words that came before we left the house. The last thing she said to me.

  Both of you.

  She cared enough to want me back alive. Trusted me enough to make sure Seth came back too.

  Seth. Who I had almost completely forgotten about.

  I edge back toward the front of the house, to where I can watch for him, too. And it’s almost instantaneous: The second I look away from the house, I see a car materializing far in the distance, tearing its way off the main road and heading straight for the safe house.

  That idiot.

  I sprint from my hiding place, racing to intercept him. I don’t have time to come up with a better plan. He has already been spotted; I hear the door of the house opening as I race past. Whoever comes out must immedi
ately alert everyone else who was watching and waiting for us, because as I close in on Seth’s car, two more cars appear behind him. They seem to come out of nowhere to block the exit back to the main road. Desperation surges through me, pushes me faster—and right into the path of Seth.

  I’m lucky that his reflexes are as fast as my reckless decision making.

  He comes to a screeching halt, creating a swirling storm of dust and dry grass. I choke on it until my eyes water, leaving me half blind as I yank open the door and shove and kick Seth over to the passenger seat. He is shocked enough that I manage to take control of the steering wheel from him. When he does start fighting back a split second later, I already have my foot on the accelerator. I slam it down and cut the wheel hard to the left, which sends him flying into the passenger-side window. He pushes off it and swerves and slumps back toward me, holding his head with one hand and still reaching for the steering wheel with the other. I cut the wheel again to throw him off balance.

  He catches and braces himself against the dash. “Stop doing that.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Like hell you are.”

  I glance into the rearview mirror. Those two cars are still closing in, and more have joined the chase and are catching up in the distance. “We have to get to the trees,” I tell Seth. “We can outrun them on foot if we have enough of a head start and we can get to the wider stretch of woods to the south. Get ready to jump out.”

  “As soon as I jump out, the only place I’m running to is straight back to the house.”

  I think about jerking the wheel again and trying to slam some sense into his head. I don’t believe it would do any good, though.

  “Stop the car,” he says.

  “Not yet.”

  “Stop the damn car.”

  “She isn’t even there!” The lie comes out so loudly, so fervently, that I almost believe it myself. Of course, maybe it isn’t a lie. I don’t know. I don’t doubt for a second, though, that he will run right back to that house if he thinks Angie is still in it. And I promised her I wouldn’t let him do anything so stupid.

  “What do you mean she’s not there?” His voice is quiet—starkly so, after my shouting and the chaos of the past couple of minutes.

  I grip the steering wheel tighter and stare straight ahead. For a few seconds there is only the sound of the bumpy ground beneath us, the car slamming into occasional holes, wheels throwing up dirt and pebbles that ping against its frame. “I mean Angie is gone,” I say. “They’re all gone, and no one is there except more CCA members than the two of us could possibly fight on our own.”

  I slam to a stop, grab the bags at my feet, throw open my door, and jump out. Seth jumps out right behind me, but while I run straight for the woods ahead, he only turns toward the cars that are almost on top of us now. He has a gun lifted in his hand and a detached, crazy sort of gleam in his eye. I shout his name. My voice doesn’t even make him stumble. I scramble to him, grab his arm, and jerk him aside just as one of the CCA members fires from the window of their car.

  The shot whizzes past, just inches from our heads.

  I tighten my grip on Seth’s arm and keep dragging him toward the trees. Normally I wouldn’t be able to overpower him as easily as this, but at the moment I am a lot more focused than he is.

  I manage to keep him moving for at least a mile. Not as quickly as I would like to move, but still moving at least, and quick enough to shake our pursuers. The second I loosen my grip, he snaps out of his daze and is able to jerk the rest of the way free of me. He pushes me away a lot harder than necessary, considering I just kept him from getting his stupid self killed.

  And then he just stands there, looking back the way we came, as if he is still thinking about running back toward those CCA members with guns blazing.

  “We should keep moving,” I say.

  At first I think he is just going to ignore me. But then he turns enough my way that he can see me out of the corner of his eye, and he asks, “Why didn’t you just let me go?”

  “Because I made a promise to not let you do anything stupid. And she told us not to come back. You heard her.”

  “Now we have no idea what happened,” he goes on, like I’ve said nothing. “No idea what they’ve done to her. What they’re planning to do.”

  I quiet my voice to the same level as his. “We’ll find out. Can we please just keep moving for the moment?”

  “We should have been there. Why weren’t we there?”

  I don’t bother trying to answer him this time because he is still not really talking to me so much as thinking out loud and pretending I am not even here. So I settle for watching the woods, listening instead for signs that we might still have people following us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I should never have gone along with your stupid plan.”

  The woods seem very quiet all of a sudden.

  “I never said you had to,” I say. “And spying on the CCA rebels was your idea, anyway—and we always knew there was a possibility we would get caught, and that they would come after us. I’m sorry that Angie ended up in the line of fire, but it isn’t like this was part of my stupid plan.” I keep talking, keep making excuses. Two things I have almost never felt like I had to do before now. I want to convince him, though. To convince myself that this isn’t my fault. This can’t be my fault.

  How could I have known things would come to this?

  Why couldn’t I have known?

  My brain can process things fast—so fast—so why couldn’t it have run all the possible outcomes of my plan? Why didn’t it see this exact scenario coming?

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it?” Seth says. “She’s gone either way.” His voice is still quiet. Still oddly calm. But his hands have started to tremble. I keep a wary eye on the gun still in the right one, wishing I had thought to take it. I take a cautious step toward him, thinking I might still try.

  He backs away. Lifts the gun a little higher in his still-quivering hand.

  “Give me that,” I say. Not a request. A demand.

  He shakes his head.

  “I’m serious, Seth.”

  But he doesn’t hand it over. He starts to walk away, then doubles back in a blind, frustrated rage and throws it at me instead. I duck just quickly enough to let it soar past and crash into a tree behind me.

  “What the hell?”

  “You,” he says, thrusting a finger toward me, “you shut up. This is your fault.”

  I watch, not knowing what to say, as he wanders with heavy footsteps toward the tree he hit. He braces one arm and leans against it for a moment, his head buried in his free hand, and then he slumps down to the ground and reaches for the gun. He looks utterly defeated.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. And I mean it. I have been accused of lots of monstrous things in this short life, but this might be the first time that I feel like I truly, honestly deserve what I am being accused of. Like I should apologize for this. For being so shortsighted, so caught up in my plan that I didn’t stop to think about what Seth was really saying, back at the beginning of all this. He warned me that things could go wrong. He didn’t want to talk to Jaxon, or anyone at the CCA, about my plan—didn’t want to drag these two different sides of his life together.

  But I made him.

  And apologizing for that doesn’t make the sick feeling in my stomach go away like I hoped it would.

  “I’m sorry too,” Seth says after a long, awkward minute. “I shouldn’t have thrown this.” He holds up the gun and gives it a little shake. It makes a pathetic clattering noise, and the scope across its top looks as if it’s moving more than it should be. “Because now I’m pretty sure it’s broken, and I liked this gun.”

  “I should have just let it hit me,” I say, matching his deadpan tone. “Would have been softer than the tree.”

  “If only I’d thrown it faster.”

  “Hindsight.”

  “It’s twenty-twenty, they say.”

&
nbsp; He sits there quietly for a long while after that, staring at the gun like it’s his tragically fallen best friend. I’m almost sure he’s not really thinking about the gun, but that doesn’t make him look any less pathetic. And I don’t know how to deal with sad and pathetic. Mostly it just makes me terribly uneasy to see him this way.

  I clear my throat. “Getting angry at me isn’t going to help anything. And Angie could be fine, but if you keep sitting here, wasting time feeling sorry for yourself, then how are you going to find out?”

  “I know.” He leans back against the tree and shuts his eyes. “I’m just tired of all this. Tired of fighting. Tired of trying to decide which side is right and wrong and then inevitably ending up on the losing side either way.”

  I try to think of what it must have been like to have dealt with what I have for as many years as he has—walking around in a secondhand skin, caught in the middle, playing a role that feels like it was written for someone else. But I can’t fathom it. All I know is I don’t want to deal with it for as many years as he has. After only eight months of it, I’ve already had enough. Which is why I can’t stop now. We have to find a way to end this.

  I walk over and offer him a hand up. “I’m tired too,” I say.

  He stares at my hand, debating for a moment before grabbing it and letting me pull him back to his feet. Once he gets there, he is slow to release his grip. “You’re touching me,” he says.

  “So?”

  “So you hate touching people.”

  “Oh.” I did it without even thinking about it. “You noticed.”

  “Something about the murderous look in your eyes every time I got too close.”

  “Well,” I say, drawing my hand back and shoving it into my coat pocket. “People change.”

  “You think so?”

  “Maybe.”

  Or maybe they just aren’t always what you thought they were in the beginning.

  “Come on,” I say, and I start to walk, as if I know the path to take to escape all these things. But I don’t even know how deep these woods go. I don’t know what lies on the other side either, or what we could possibly do to fix any of this when we get there.