“And everything else?” I demand. “The program you supposedly created? Was any of that even real?”
“Of course it was,” she says. “It had to be. I was working on it with Angie—and she didn’t know about any of these plans. So the program is more or less functioning, and I really was excited about that. But I altered a few things in the version I gave you, to prevent it from spreading the way it needed to. I couldn’t risk jeopardizing the deal I’d made with Huxley; if that program did work, if it did spread and we’d managed to free all their clones, and they found out I had a hand in it . . . well, it wouldn’t have mattered what I managed to accomplish here for them, would it?”
“I still don’t understand: What good will it do if Huxley does free your daughter as promised, if you’re just going to die in here?”
“Do you think I’m the one who set the fire outside this particular room?”
My sudden understanding must be obvious, because with a weary little smile she says, “I wasn’t planning on dying here. I had this all mapped out so meticulously, you know—everything that would happen here, and what would come next. But I should have known there would be no next. That Huxley would avoid keeping its part of the bargain, somehow. I suppose that’s what I get for making deals with devils, right? And this ending is probably the one I deserve, anyway, for what I did when I worked for them. Maybe we all deserve it for the things we’ve done—me, Angie, Cross. All of us.”
There’s a sudden crash from the other side of the door. It shakes the ground hard enough that I almost lose my balance. I fight to steady myself, and then somehow force my burned and broken body to move to the computer and shove Leah out of the way. “I am not dying here,” I say. “Tell me how to put the system back online. Now.”
Another quake from outside.
The roof. The support beams.
Leah looks from the computer to me, and holds my gaze for a long moment—too long. I can see the thoughts churning behind her eyes, restless and searching for answers we don’t have time to find right now.
“You could have just left us all, you know,” she finally says. “It would have been easy for you to save yourself.”
“I know.”
But I didn’t. It never even occurred to me that I could have, until she said it.
And for whatever reason, that seems to cause a change of heart for Leah. She steps between me and the computer and silently begins to work. Minutes later we hear the shower of pings, the sound of water against metal, and the hiss and sizzle of fire being extinguished. Then more of those scrapes and creaks of support beams.
“The roof may not hold,” I say. “We need to get out of here.”
Smoke-tinted steam floods into the room as we open the door—so much of it that my clothes are already soaked and clinging to me before we even step out underneath the sprinklers. So thick that it’s almost worse than trying to find our way through the smoke.
I almost don’t see the falling beam until it’s too late.
But I manage to push Leah out of the way. She hits the ground in front of me just as the piece of the crumbling ceiling lands on my shoulder, crushing me to the floor and pinning me underneath it.
The air feels even damper, heavier here on the floor. I can barely breathe. I glance at my pinned legs and try to convince myself that I am strong enough to move.
Leah’s hand clasps around mine. She jerks and tugs uselessly, while above us, more of the beams are slipping, caving together into a long V shape that looks as if it will collapse in on itself at any moment.
“Go!” I shout at Leah.
“I can’t just—”
“I’m faster than you.” My words stutter out in between harsh breaths. Talking is taking too much of my precious energy, but she still hasn’t let go of my hand. Her stubbornness reminds me of the last person I want to think about right now: Catelyn. “I’m faster than you,” I repeat in a whisper. Quiet is easier, somehow. “I’ll catch up.”
And for a moment I would swear it actually is Catelyn staring at me. That it is her, finally letting her hand slip from mine, finally backing away as I tell her, one last time: Don’t worry. I’m coming back too.
No matter how many times I run away, I always come back.
Everything feels cold all of a sudden. It must be because of the cool water raining down on me. There are still patches of defiant flames flickering among the debris, refusing to be extinguished by that water; I stare at the one closest to me and try to somehow will its warmth into my bones.
Get up, I remind myself. That is what I am supposed to be doing. Get up and go back to Catelyn. She was always warmth. From the first day I woke up, she was a steady flame to that inferno raging inside me.
That violent inferno has been all but snuffed out now.
The water is starting to bring peace as it slides over my skin, washing away the ash. I am getting used to its coldness. Fond of it.
Somewhere up above, things are shifting. Moving. Falling.
I close my eyes, and I drift into a deep sleep.
EPILOGUE
I took some of the flowers from my sister’s funeral, because I thought I might need something else to remember her by.
There are no more replacements now. No more silly games to play, no more secrets to share, no more of her perfect face and perfect smile to be jealous of. No more us. Violet is gone, and she is not coming back, and all I have left of her is this vase full of flowers that have already started to die. That, and the tiny round tin that contains a sprinkling of her ashes.
Three times now I’ve watched my sister die.
It hasn’t gotten any easier each time.
There’s a soft knocking at my door, and I turn to see Jaxon standing with my coat draped over his arm. “Ready to go?” he asks.
I nod. Because this house has captured ghosts of my sister in everything I see, from the sandals I borrowed from her and never gave back to the red streak of marker she scribbled on the wall and then blamed me for. Ghosts I’m finally ready to leave behind.
I only wish we’d left sooner. Years and years ago, before anything that’s happened could have touched us, back when we were still a whole family with all its pieces.
But that’s a selfish thought, I guess.
Violet’s sacrifice silenced some of the uprising—funny how quickly some of them changed their views on clones once one saved their life. Not all of them, of course; though even the ones she didn’t completely silence have, in a lot of cases, still quieted down enough now to listen. And while they had their attention, President Cross, alongside Angie and Leah, shared the plan that Violet first told us in the park that night, what feels long ago and forever away now. I wasn’t sure, back then, if the president was actually taking that plan seriously. But now she talks about it with a passion that makes me believe she’s committed to seeing it through. All the way through. Which is good, because the virus is the easy part—but after that’s done, there will still be a long way to go toward repairing this city and the ones in it.
I’m not as naïve as I used to be. There’s no telling how Huxley will retaliate, once we deal this blow to them. And even if we do manage to unravel them completely, I know that the city will likely always remain unsettled, unsure in places, full of still-smoldering hot spots that could erupt at any point. Full of a fear of clones that runs too deep for it to simply be erased, even once Huxley’s control over those clones is erased.
But at least now my sister will be remembered as someone who tried to fix it, at least in some ways.
“We’ll be waiting in the car,” Jaxon says. “Anything else you need me to carry?” I shake my head. There’s only one other thing I have left to carry, and I’m the only one who can do it. Jaxon leaves, and I walk over and carefully pluck a few of the more vibrant petals left on the flowers. I open the tin and drop them in with her ashes.
The three of us decided a quick road trip was in order, while the dust of everything that’s happened takes its
time to settle here, and Angie and President Cross work out the plans for moving forward. So it’ll just be me, Jaxon, Seth, and a couple of cars full of our closest bodyguard friends. We’re going to the beach, to find the highest waves and roughest waters we can. It seems like a fitting place to scatter these few last pieces of Violet Benson that I hold in my hand. Because every version of her has been a little too wild for this life.
A little too wild to hang on to.
And because she’d be glad for the freedom of the open ocean, I think.
Author photo by Shane Atkinson
STEFANIE GAITHER is the author of Falls the Shadow. And while she’s happiest when she’s writing books like it, she’s also done everything from working on a chicken farm to running a small business, with a lot of really odd jobs in between. She graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne University, and now lives in the beautiful foothills of North Carolina with her husband and one very busy baby girl who she just barely manages to keep up with. You can visit her online at stefaniegaither.com.
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Falls the Shadow
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Stefanie Gaither
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gaither, Stefanie, author.
Title: Into the abyss / Stefanie Gaither.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2016] |
Summary: Her memory and personality erased, and accused of betraying the CCA, Violet Benson runs away with her foster brother Seth and discovers new information about her city’s history—and the truth about cloning.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015037167| ISBN 9781481449953 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781481449977 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Identity—Fiction. | Cloning—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.G1293 Int 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015037167
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