“Sit back down,” Josh says, pressing one of the guns into my chest.
“If I sit down, they’ll shoot you.”
“I don’t care.” I don’t think he really does, either. And I don’t know why I do, but I stay on my feet. “Get back on the ground where you belong,” Josh warns, “or I will pull this trigger again.”
I take a step, shrinking back as if I am actually thinking about it.
Then I punch him instead.
It was for his own good, really. Because now he is the one lying on the floor, after tripping over the president’s outstretched body, and he is too dazed to put up much of a fight when I disarm him. I peer over my shoulder to see the line of CCA loyalists lowering their weapons. Catelyn and Jaxon push through them and hurry over to me and President Cross, and I see that they’ve managed to get their handcuffs off too—with Seth’s help, maybe. He follows the two of them a moment later, leaning a bit on Angie for support.
“I so wanted to be the one to do that,” Seth says, looking down at Josh’s still, curled-up body. “Except I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop at just a punch.” He says that, but I don’t think it’s sincere. As his voice trails off toward the end, he doesn’t seem to be able to keep his eyes on Josh.
Maybe it’s because of the way Josh is holding his head and curling into himself. As if he wishes, just for the moment, that he could make himself disappear. That he could get away from this place, and everything that happened here and everything that led up to it. No more of that confidence now. Just a small and broken boy as in over his head as I am beginning to think we all are.
I don’t want to look at it any more than I wanted to watch his father pull him away from the lab.
“I’m fine. Just a bit light-headed is all.” I am grateful for President Cross’s voice, because it wakes me up, pulls my attention away from Josh. She is sitting partway up. Her arm is resting against Jaxon, while Angie tries to clean away some of the blood and other seepage around the wound. I reach absently up between my shoulder blades, checking my own wounds, and my fingers find the bits of my shirt torn and singed by gunfire. The cloth around them is damp with blood.
Human blood, I remember Angie calling it the night we met.
And it does look like the president’s, maybe. But for me, unlike for her, that bleeding has stopped. My body has put itself nearly back together again, while hers is still too weak to stand.
Members of the CCA stand like sentinels around us, and even though I know they are mostly here for the president—that they are on the loyal, moderate side—it still feels strange to be protected by them like this.
“Mostly shock, I think,” the president insists, trying to push Angie’s hand away.
“That shot nearly hit your heart,” Angie says sternly.
“Well then, it’s a good thing I have a heart made of . . . what was it you said that time? ‘Painfully solid stone’?”
Angie looks sheepish. “This is hardly the time to bring up the past,” she says, continuing to clean. “This looks bad,” she says after a minute. “The bleeding doesn’t seem to be stopping. And I’m not exactly this sort of doctor, but I would guess it’s only going to get worse unless we get her stitched up. Soon.”
“There are more pressing things to deal with at the moment,” the president says. She attempts to stand, but both Jaxon and Seth are there to hold her down. She struggles. But only for a few seconds.
Then an alarm shrieks through the intercom system around the room, and she freezes.
“See? More pressing things such as that,” she says in between the pulsing shrieks. She places a hand on Jaxon’s and Seth’s arms and pushes herself up, ignoring their objections and Angie’s disapproving frown, and staggers to the broken window. We all follow.
The scene outside has gone eerily quiet. People are standing, staring up at the intercom speakers and at one another, looking as though they have no idea how they arrived here. It makes all the signs of destruction and death—the still bodies on the ground, the scent of blood and charred flesh and hot metal—even harder to stomach, without the cushion of chaos around to distract from them.
A woman breaks free from the crowd, walks over to the door, and presses the button to open it.
A wall of black smoke rages in from the hallway.
“Shut the door!” the president shouts, and even in her weakened state her voice carries through the room.
The woman frantically tries to obey, but the door isn’t made to shut quickly; it creeps along its track, sliding shut only after it’s already let enough smoke in to start a coughing fit rippling through the crowd. This room is huge, though, and with plenty of space to disperse, the smoke rapidly stretches into little more than a thin haze. People start to panic anyway. Some are tripping over themselves to get away from the door, others arguing over whether or not to reopen that door and try to make a run for it. All other fighting has been forgotten for the moment, it seems, but this isn’t much better.
The president takes one of my guns, stumbles out of the observation room and fires a shot into the air. It gets the attention of the panickers closest to us, and then one by one more of the crowd behind them looks in our direction. A hush falls over them.
“That door is built to withstand all the extreme conditions this room can be programmed to simulate.” President Cross still has to shout to make herself heard over the sounding alarm. “It’s virtually indestructible, and certainly fireproof. Do not open it.”
Her words cause a wave of almost-calm to wash over the room. But I noticed the way her voice faltered a bit at “indestructible,” as if she didn’t quite believe that was the right word.
“ ‘Virtually indestructible’?” I repeat, dropping down beside her as she kneels down to catch her breath. “Does that mean it’s actually perfectly destructible?”
I would swear she almost smiles. “Always so full of questions, aren’t you?” Her eyes close for a moment, and she takes several more deep, steadying breaths as the rest of our group gathers around her. “That was too much smoke,” she finally says, and then she opens her eyes and looks to Jaxon, to the communicator around his wrist. “Contact the main operations control room, please,” she says in her calm, understated way. “And let’s hope there is still someone at the monitors.”
Jaxon does as he is told. After he messes with it for a moment, a woman appears on the tiny screen, and he hands the communicator over to his mother.
“Hello, Rachel,” the president says. “Status report? What exactly is going on?”
The woman on the other end wastes no time. “Fire observed in the main hall, in north wing corridor A, south wing corridor D, and the corridor of training room three. All doors have been sealed where possible to contain it until we are able to extinguish it.”
“But why is it not already extinguished?”
“The automatic sprinkler system has disengaged somehow.” The woman’s words tumble out in a rush. “There are no cameras in the room that contains the system’s control panel, and we tried to send someone to check, but—”
“They couldn’t get through the D corridor of the south wing.”
“Correct.”
The president massages her temple. The hand she uses has blood from her wound on it, and some of it ends up smudged across her forehead. “All of those fire locations are blocking exits,” she says. “I don’t think the sprinklers being disengaged was an accident.”
Angie says what we all must be thinking: “Someone was trying to trap us. All of us.”
“Orders, ma’am?” says the woman on the screen.
But the president appears out of orders to give.
“It’s contained, right?” Catelyn asks. “It will eventually burn itself out without getting any fresh oxygen, won’t it?”
“It would likely take hours for that to happen,” Angie says. “And by then the structural damage may be substantial, and it won’t be contained just to those rooms. It will be a domino
effect. When the supports of the hall outside this room go, for example, chances are . . .”
“We’ll be crushed in this room as well,” the president finishes for her. Her eyes have taken on that same glassy look they held earlier. “While we were busy destroying ourselves, we forgot there were still others outside, waiting to do the same. We knew this is what they wanted. We should have seen something like this coming.”
“We just have to find a way to fix the extinguisher system before the damage gets too bad,” Seth says. “We have to get to that room somehow.”
“It is likely already up in flames,” the president says quietly.
I stand up. Visions of the last time I was in this room flash through my mind. I think of blacking out, of that numbing, violent ringing in my mind and of a life that is a million miles away from where I find myself now.
And once that ringing stops, there are only two words left to find there, within all of my brain’s artificial grooves and circuits.
“I’ll go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I step into blindingly bright flames and suffocating heat.
It looks as though those flames have already smoldered out some, as Catelyn guessed they would, because the black melting streaks they’ve scorched along the walls were made by flames much higher than the tongues of fire that lash around my feet now. But it’s still hot enough that I already feel blisters bubbling across the unprotected skin of my face and hands.
I cover my mouth with my arm, and run.
Almost immediately I slip, and catch myself in a pile of flames that singe the tips of my hair. My nose fills with the scent of the burning strands. I shove myself back up as fast as I can, before any other part of me has a chance to catch fire. There is something glistening along the floor beneath my feet, beneath the flames. A fuel of some sort. More proof that this fire was deliberate. As stray embers land across the scattered drops of slick fuel, they explode in brilliant little bursts around me.
I continue to run, picking my way around the slippery spots as best I can with eyes watery from smoke.
Soon I turn a corner and leave the flames behind, though the smoke remains, hanging heavy enough over me that I can see only inches ahead. I drop to the floor, where that smoke is at least somewhat thinner, and feel my way along the warm walls until I come to a more open room. The air in here is clearer, but it’s still hard to catch my breath without choking on it.
But I have to stop for a minute. I have to give my body a chance to heal. I can still feel those blisters on my hands and face, along with more burning and an itching, pulling pain traveling up legs. It feels like my skin is shrinking, like it’s too tight for my body. I lean my shoulder against the wall and close my eyes, and almost immediately I hear Seth’s voice in my head.
Don’t be stupid. You’re tough, but you’re not invincible. You can’t walk through fire.
“Watch me,” I say to the smoke. Because I guess I already miss having someone to argue with.
But of course, since he isn’t here to answer, it’s a short-lived argument.
I don’t want him here, I remind myself. It would make no sense for us to both be in danger like this, and he has more life to lose than my short eight months. He has to realize that, doesn’t he? How many times did I explain to him that we weren’t the same?
Still, he is going to be so mad at me when I come back.
Catelyn, too.
Don’t you dare, she warned me. Don’t you dare.
I did it anyway, though. I pushed her away, like I’ve done so many times before. Too many times? Enough times that I know I will never hear the end of this when I come back.
“When I come back . . .” I repeat aloud. “When, not if.” Speaking to smoke again. It is unsurprisingly silent as I shove off the wall and continue to part my way through it. I can’t waste any more time. My feet and legs still itch and burn and ache, but I do my best to ignore it.
Your system is already overloaded from trying to heal so much.
Angie’s voice, now. It sounds like I imagine a mother’s is supposed to sound, and I wish I’d had a chance to hear more of it. That we could have talked about simpler things, things other than this war, or the monstrous things they created and the monsters who rose up to fight those things. The memory of her voice is a comfort, cool water against the soot collecting on my parched skin.
I reach the narrow hall in the south wing—which I recognize from the directions and descriptions President Cross gave me—and can only guess that my destination is at the end of it. I don’t know this part of headquarters well, and I can’t actually see the door to the control room, thanks to smoke and bands of writhing flame swallowing up the space between here and there. The bands seem to be stretching, reaching to consume me next. A little closer with every passing second. My hands and feet are numb. My mouth barren. Lips cracked. Eyes nearly swollen shut.
I don’t know how much longer my body is going to hold up.
It’s now, or it’s never.
I sprint forward, pumping my legs as hard as I can, desperately hoping I can move fast enough to keep the flames from latching on. Five feet, ten feet, fifteen feet—and suddenly the door materializes in front of me. I don’t want to figure out any security codes, or think about finding another way inside. I only want out of this fire. Even if it means breaking my way out. So without much thought, I lower my shoulder and slam full speed into the door.
It stands firm, shaking only a little at my jarring impact. The tremor reverberates up into the ceiling. Glowing bits of molten metal and ash shake free from some support beams, and they float down over me as I back up toward the door, stripping off my jacket and attempting to beat the encroaching flames away. My hand claws for the panel beside the door, even though I know it will likely be melted, twisted into a nonfunctioning blob of buttons and screen.
It is.
I lean back more fully against the door, not caring anymore that it is searing hot, and that the heat hisses right through the thin cotton shirt I am wearing beneath my jacket. The support beams above me shift and groan, more radiant pieces of them drifting away, bit by bit. I shut my eyes, not wanting to see the moment the ceiling completely gives way.
The door behind me pulls open, and I crash backward onto the floor.
Someone grabs me by the collar of my shirt, drags me farther in, and quickly slams the door shut again. I hear the ferocious whoosh of the flames on the other side, as the fresh oxygen from this room is funneled out into them. More creaks and groans from the ceiling follow soon after.
“I expected Seth, maybe. Not you.”
I rub the soot and tears from my eyes, and look up to find Leah watching me. She is leaning beside a computer that is built into the wall, her arms folded across her chest. The room is a relief from outside, but still sweltering, and now cloudy with the smoke we let in. It all makes it hard to collect my scattered senses. To find words.
“You did this?” I finally manage to cough.
“I had help.” Her gaze drifts to the computer screen. “But, yes, I overrode the auto-program and activated the stop valves. There were others who sneaked in with me, during all that chaos and distraction the rest of you caused. Old friends of mine, if you could call them that. They started the blaze.”
“Why?”
“Fire for fire, right?” she says, and suddenly I realize: I am brushing the ash from my clothes the same way I did in Huxley’s old lab. “Or at least, that’s what Huxley wanted. This wasn’t my idea—I only carried it out for them.”
“You were supposed to be an ex–Huxley employee,” I say, staggering to my feet. “Why are you doing anything they want?”
“Because I made a deal.” Her voice starts out sharp and sure, but it cracks and goes quiet toward the end.
My voice is equally quiet, an overwhelmed sort of calm, when I ask, “What could they have possibly offered to convince you to do this?”
“They have something of mine,” she says.
“And they promised to give it back.”
A memory flashes to the front of my mind; but even though it came as quickly as my brain normally opens things, it seems oddly blurry. Surreal, almost. As if it came from a different life, even though I am sure that it was me—that it was this Violet Benson—who listened to Seth’s explanation as we rode on that shuttle.
“You mean your daughter, don’t you?” I ask.
Leah’s eyes are haunted as they meet mine. They remind me of Angie’s that night we sat at the kitchen table. Of all the questions I had, and how desperate for answers I was. How desperate I still am. Because even now, nothing I know seems right. There is no clear answer, no clear purpose for anything. No good and no evil like my rational mind has always longed for. No black or white, only shades of both and hordes of people caught in between, trying to fight their way out.
“You helped me, though,” I say, “the very first day you met me.”
She turns back to the computer and absently starts pressing buttons. “I wish Seth had never told us about you,” she says. “I wish I’d never known you were coming. That you’d never shown up at all. You made it so easy to get the information about the CCA headquarters that I needed to plan this—so easy for me to get into your brain, and access a few key memory files while I was in there.”
All I can do is stare.
I trusted her.
I thought that was what I had to do, that it was the right thing to do if I was going to evolve into something more human, something more right for this world. It was supposed to put us on the same side.
I thought we were on the same side.
“I fixed your blackouts because I really did want to,” she says quietly, as if that makes up for anything at all. “I did want to help you. But you have to understand: I had to help myself, too.”
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