It’s Josh.
And several feet behind him, instead of his usual gang, there are two older CCA members. Between them is Catelyn, with her arms and legs tied and a strip of tape across her mouth. She looks dazed. A nasty burn covers a large strip of the right side of her face, blistering red welts visible even at the distance she is from the camera.
“Hello again,” Josh says. “Your sister tried to cut us off, like she didn’t want you to see this happen or something”—he gestures behind him—“but it feels like it’s been forever since we talked, doesn’t it? And I don’t think she relayed the message I needed you to get quite as clearly as I would have liked. I thought this might help clarify things.”
Seth puts a hand on my arm and gently pulls my fingers away from the screen. He lets his hand linger there, and for once I am glad for his touch, for the weight of it, because the urge to hit the screen is even stronger than before.
“Is that Seth behind you?” Josh asks. “Tell him I’m sorry Jaxon isn’t here too. He and his mom are tied up elsewhere at the moment—which is a shame, right? It could have been this whole weird little family get-together thing.”
Seth’s grip on me tightens.
“Let them go,” I say.
Unsurprisingly, Josh laughs. “We will,” he says, “when we’re ready to. When we’ve made our point, and nobody else around here thinks it’s a good idea to associate with the very things we’re supposed to be fighting against. When nobody else wants to keep dangerous clones like you two as little pets, the way the so-called president of this organization was doing.”
My eyes are still watching Catelyn, so I see her blink into an almost awareness—aware enough that she is able to look straight at the computer screen and start to struggle, screaming words that are only muffled by the tape.
Josh holds up a small tool that blocks my view of her; I would guess it is the same one that burned through the door and left that mark on Catelyn’s face, because he walks over and presses the tapered nozzle of it against her other, unburned cheek. Her eyes widen at the sight of it, and then close tightly, bracingly.
“This is a useful thing,” Josh says, digging the nozzle around in her skin. “As good at shutting mouths as it is at opening doors.”
“Don’t.” I mean to shout it, but it comes out as a horrified whisper instead.
“ ‘Don’t’?” He pulls the tip away from her cheek, lets it hover just a few inches from her face. “I wonder: How many people have said ‘don’t’ to you in the past, and you didn’t bother to listen to them? You weren’t a very good listener before Cross brought you back here, you know.”
“I’m different,” I say quietly.
“You look the same to me.”
“Don’t,” I say again, as close to begging as I think I’ve ever sounded, which he seems to find amusing.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay. I won’t. So long as you understand what is going to happen next.”
I want to guess that what happens next is I come to the CCA headquarters and rip his disgusting throat out, but I don’t want to make him angry, because I know he would only take it out on Catelyn. So instead all I say is, “I’m listening.”
“Good. Here’s what you’re going to do,” he says. “Both you and Seth—you’re going to come and hand yourselves over to us within the next twenty-four hours. And then it’s going to be the way it should be: The humans get to live, and the monsters get to die. Just like in every story that’s ever ended with ‘happily ever after.’ ” He walks back to the camera, and I allow myself the first decent breath I have taken since he moved closer to Catelyn. “I’ll see you soon, then?” he asks, leaning in so that I can’t focus on Catelyn, or on the room behind him, or on anything except for his eyes, which are shining as if he has already beaten me.
“Very soon,” I promise him. “And you will regret every second of this call.”
“Doubt it,” he says with a smile. Then he cuts the connection, and this time the screen stays black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You two are both insane,” Tori says. Again.
“We know,” Seth says, taking the steps in a few long leaps and bounds. He pauses at the top of them long enough to glance at his communicator, and then he is disappearing into the sanctuary above as he adds, “Somebody was just telling us that. It was you, I think?”
I follow him upstairs without a word, ignoring Tori as she sprints to catch up with us.
“It was bad enough that you were planning on going back there when things were just tense,” she presses. “But now there’s a full-scale uprising, and they’re expecting you two, and—”
Seth stops so abruptly that she slams into the back of him. “You saw the video.” He spins around, brings his face level with hers so quickly that I think she is going to trip trying to get out of his way. “It’s not like we can wait this out and see if things somehow shift in our favor.” He doesn’t elaborate past that, but I know he is thinking the same thing I am: Josh said we had twenty-four hours, but there is no telling what they might do to their hostages during those twenty-four hours.
Thinking about it makes me want to hit something all over again, so I am glad Seth dealt with Tori. Because I honestly don’t want to hit her. I have actually been growing sort of fond of her.
“You two are going to get killed,” she says, her voice a little quieter as she warily watches Seth turn his back on her and keep walking.
“Well,” Seth says drily, “at least we’re no strangers to death.”
• • •
We move as quickly through the city as we can while still staying discreet. It’s just Seth and me now. We decided it was too dangerous, with the way things have escalated in these past hours, to bring the others. Tori halfheartedly argued with us about that—and forced me to sit still long enough to at least figure out a way to block the signal from the tracker embedded in me—but she finally agreed to let us go alone, once Leah insisted there were other things they could do to help us from the outside. I don’t know exactly what Leah had in mind, because there was no time for her to elaborate; when we left, she was back at her computer and working just as intently and furiously as she had been the night before.
Zach meets us several blocks away from headquarters, with a handful of CCA loyalists in tow. “There’s another team of us inside,” he tells us, “waiting to create a distraction so we can lead you guys to where we think they’re keeping Catelyn. And then to the others.”
“The others,” meaning more loyalists who have managed to get themselves locked up. Zach claims he wanted to help us, but he can’t exactly stop in the middle of this uprising and focus on freeing only the ones we’ve come for. So he agreed that he would help us out in return for our help breaking these others free—more quid pro quo, as Seth called it. Though I think Seth partly agreed because he feels more loyalty toward the president, and the ones still following her, than I do; my main concern is Catelyn, though, which is why I insisted we free her first. Once I get her out, then I’ll focus on these other people—but not before. My single-track mind working once again.
I don’t care, though, because that track is going to lead me back to her.
I trail a little ways behind the group as we approach headquarters, only partially listening to the hushed conversation Zach and Seth are having. I feel like Zach should be a little more focused on the task ahead, but he doesn’t seem to be able to stop giving Seth strange looks.
“Still having a hard time believing you’re . . . you know,” he finally says as we make it to the edge of the parking garage. “You look the same.”
I hear muffled laughter from Seth. “That’s kind of the point,” he says. “That I look the same as a human? It’s like . . . Cloning 101.”
“You know what I mean. I’ve known you for a long time, and you were a human as far as I knew or cared.” He shrugs—the smallest of movements, but it causes a light fluttering in my chest. A flutter of hope, maybe? That when
this is over with, the more moderate CCA will prevail. That they really will be able to help the rest of the city shrug off the old mind-set toward clones as easily as Zach has accepted the truth about Seth.
Maybe we weren’t fast enough to prevent what is happening tonight, but things won’t end here.
I keep telling myself that as we huddle around Zach’s communicator, listening. It’s linked to the communicator on the wrist of his distraction team’s leader, so that even though we can’t see everything going on in the base, we can still hear it.
Zach sends a text message—a silent We’re ready.
For what feels like much too long after that, we hear only silence over the communicator’s speaker.
Then the leader, in a whisper, tells us they’re in position. That the bombs are set and ready to be tossed.
Flash bombs, Zach explains. Not anything that will do any major structural damage, of course, but the noise and smoke and vibrations they create—along with whatever other noise the team can make—should be enough to draw people toward it, away from the entrance we plan to use.
We slip into our own position, moving our huddle to that entrance, which is a high-security one normally reserved for the president and only a handful of others; Jaxon provided Zach with a key capable of opening it, and Zach presses that key to the panel beside the door. The light around the scanner blinks from red to green. We all ready our weapons, and Zach lifts the communicator to his lips.
“Okay,” he says. “Go.”
The door in front of us slides up at the same time a barrage of noise begins to drown out any hope of communicating with the other team. One thunderous rumble after another as at least ten bombs go off, followed by shouts mixed in with coughing and choking.
We can’t see it, but we can tell when at least some of the smoke has settled, because that’s when we start to hear gunfire in the distance. Seth and I both just move faster, but the rest of our group hesitates, looking in the direction of the distraction point.
I think of Catelyn’s burned face, and it’s all I can do to not start grabbing people and dragging them.
“We need to focus on our part,” Seth says, more patiently than I ever could have. “Let them do theirs.” It snaps two of our group out of it, sends them sprinting to catch up with us. But the third still lingers behind. She is still standing there, wearing a torn expression, when two CCA members barrel around the corner behind us.
I’m irritated at having been slowed down, and it shows in how fast I aim and pull the trigger—almost before I can take the time to be sure the ones I’m shooting are part of the splinter group, and not the CCA loyalists we’re planning to help.
I still only shoot to disarm. Even with all the intelligence we gathered, Seth is still convinced that we might be wrong about who is good, or bad, or something in between, so we decided before coming in that we would kill as few as possible. I hit the hand of the closest CCA member, and Seth makes an almost identical shot at the second one a moment later. Both of their weapons go flying as they clutch their hands against themselves and stumble to their knees. The lingering girl finally wakes up and remembers how to move. She grabs their guns and then races after us so fast she almost stumbles herself.
We make it the rest of the way to the north wing with only a few more encounters like that one—just the occasional CCA member or two interrupting our path. Some throw up their hands in a gesture of peace as soon as they see Zach, but it isn’t always that easy to quickly tell who is on our side and who isn’t. So we round every corner with guns drawn and raised.
Which is good, because when Zach finally leads us to the hallway outside the room Catelyn is in, we find ourselves facing four armed guards.
And they don’t shoot just to disarm.
The first bullet sears through my arm—but it would have hit me in the chest if I hadn’t twisted as quickly as I did. Focusing on dodging that, though, makes my own shot completely miss its target and hit the wall behind him instead. He takes aim at me again, but before he can fire, someone grabs his arm and twists it so hard, I am surprised we don’t hear the crack of breaking bone.
“Idiots,” snaps a voice that makes my flesh crawl. I allow my focus to abandon my target, and instead find Josh’s face as he throws off his grip on the gunman’s arm. “What do you all think you’re doing? We haven’t been given the order to kill or even harm them—my dad wants them alive and intact.” He tilts his head toward us, and his eyes find mine. “It makes for a more dramatic statement that way.”
Seth and I both lift our guns, train them on Josh’s forehead.
He lifts his gun too. But not at us. Instead, he points it back into the room he just came out of. “Who do you think I’ll hit if I pull the trigger now?” he asks.
My arm shakes, and my aim dips, just slightly.
“I’ll give you three guesses who it is,” he says. “Or, you could just refuse to lower your weapons, and then you’ll find out the hard way.”
I hate playing his games, but I don’t see any other choice at the moment. I jerk my arm down, knocking Seth’s down with it, and then turn to make sure no one else in our group has any weapons raised that might provoke Josh any further.
“Come on, man,” Seth says. “Why are you doing this?”
Josh looks almost thoughtful for a moment. And then, in a voice so chillingly detached it sends a shiver through me, he says: “We’re only doing our part to right her wrongs. To prevent more wrongs.” He still doesn’t take his aim off Catelyn.
Seth’s voice is oddly soft as he says: “This isn’t going to change anything that happened.”
“No,” Josh snaps. “But this is going to change everything that happens next.”
“And what exactly do you think is going to happen next?” I ask, trying to keep my voice as quiet and calm as Seth’s.
“The president was weak,” Josh says, his gaze sliding to mine. “And the CCA has been growing weaker underneath her. But now? Now my dad will be the one to bring this organization back to what it was intended to be, only even more powerful than before—all of you clones and your disgusting creators will actually have a reason to fear us again. And with my dad in charge—”
“You get to be his idiot lackey who doesn’t have to actually think for himself?” Seth interrupts.
Josh’s eyes narrow dangerously.
“Or who could think for himself,” Seth goes on without missing a beat, “but will still be too much of a coward to actually do it.”
I want to hit him. Because Josh’s finger is shaking, itching toward the trigger, and I swear, if Seth makes him pull it—
“At least we know you’re smart enough to follow orders though, right? So not completely brain dead. Your daddy really must be very proud.” I’m still considering hitting him, but then I see the way Josh’s whole hand is moving now, tipping the gun back toward us, bit by tiny shivering bit, and suddenly I realize what Seth is doing.
Of course.
If there is one thing Seth is good at, it is making people want to shoot him. And that gun might be able to kill Catelyn, but it isn’t going to kill either of us. Josh knows that, of course.
All it takes to make him forget it, though, are a few more taunts.
He swings the gun toward us. We move so quickly that by the time he fires, we’re both already in his face. Seth knocks the gun from his hand, and I do what I’ve been fantasizing about for months now, and throw all my strength into a punch, slamming my fist into Josh’s face and sending him spiraling into the wall. Shots fill the air around us. The rest of Josh’s group forget about any orders and simply shoot to stop us, and our backup answers with fire of their own.
I don’t care about what happens in this hallway now, though. Josh is still lying on the ground. He and his threats are out of my way. I sprint for the room holding Catelyn, colliding with one last guard on my way through the door. I manage to wrench his weapon from his hand and shove him out of the room and out of my way easily enough.
The chaos of the battle in the hallway falls behind me as I turn back, expecting to see my sister, to be able to finally make her safe again.
But she is not there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The fighting outside comes to an abrupt halt as I grab Josh, jerk him back to his feet, and throw him against the wall.
“Where is she?”
His head is lolling a bit from side to side, and his eyes are unfocused, still dazed from my punch. But he manages to laugh.
Seth has a gun in his face a moment later. “Answer the lady’s question,” he says.
“Did you think we wouldn’t know you would come straight to where you thought your sister was being held? New life, but you still end up with the same old weaknesses. Fascinating stuff, right?” Josh finally manages to hold his head straight and look me somewhat in the eyes. “We made sure our false trail was well laid, of course.”
His gaze flashes toward Zach. Zach, whose gun is raised and who, to his credit, looks mortified to have led us to the wrong place.
“Don’t blame him,” Josh says. “He tried, right? Shame none of you realized we had you heading as far from any exits as possible, just in case you thought about attempting any quick escapes once we had you cornered.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Do you honestly think you have us cornered?” I glance to my left, at the four of his group still standing. “You realize one of me is worth ten of you, don’t you?”
Josh nods. Or it’s something like a nod, anyway; I have him pinned so tightly against the wall that he can’t move much, his head included. “Yes,” he says. “Which is why we planned for a lot more to meet you here. The little bomb show on the other side of the building, which I’m assuming you’re responsible for, distracted a few, but they should be here”—he tries to glance down at his communicator, but I press him even straighter up against the wall and tighten the grip I have around his throat—“soon.” He finishes in a cough.
“Guess I should hurry and kill you now, then.” The threat has only just left my mouth when the hallway on either side of us starts to flood with people. So many people. Ones that we already knew about, of course—but there are some unexpected faces too. Some that we missed. Too many that we missed, too many people period, and all of them together are blocking any chance of our escape. Any chance of me getting to Catelyn.
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