“I couldn’t let you go with him. Now that I’ve used this gun, an elite team from Eden City will soon storm this building—unofficially, of course. Stealth helicopters will be landing on the roof to take us back to the Athenaeum. Agonya will light this suite on fire behind us … maybe the whole building.”
I stared at Drey in disbelief. “So then you just … you just ruined everything.” And then I was shouting. “Are you even on my side? He could have taken me to Khaya!”
Drey practically exploded, throwing his hands in the air to gesture wildly. “Of course he could have! Because the only person the rogue Words might have trusted enough to reveal themselves to would have been you. According to our spies, Jiang didn’t know Tu’s actual location. So in the City Council’s eyes, he was only worth keeping alive if you were willing to go with him.” He jerked an arm at the dead man on the desk. “Don’t you get it? Half of the City Council wanted you to fail in your assassination attempt! And not just to fail, but to escape. But they’d only be letting you go.”
When I looked at him blankly, he said, “Come on, Tavin, think! You’re smarter than this!”
Perhaps I should have been smarter, but I’d been too desperate. And I still didn’t want to understand him.
“How could they be letting me escape?” I demanded. “They couldn’t have followed me. I’d have gotten these bracelets off.” I glanced at the dead man, then away. “He said he had a tool.”
Drey gripped my shoulder and pulled me forward, almost like he was going to hug me, but he only tapped the back of my neck. His expression as he withdrew was … devastated. “You don’t think they have another tracker on you—in you?” he said. “The two monitors are there mostly so you wouldn’t suspect you have another. When you first got to the hospital, you were in and out of consciousness—”
“They didn’t put one in my brain like Cruithear, did they?” I interrupted, horrified. I would have thought I’d notice a scar like that no matter what, but …
“No, they need Khaya for that, or else the procedure is too risky. But there was nothing to stop them from putting one under your skin where you wouldn’t find it, during a time when you wouldn’t notice an incision healing. I suspect it’s in your neck, though I don’t know exactly where. And even if I did, it would be too dangerous for me to try to cut it out in time.”
I scrabbled at the back of my neck. I didn’t feel anything, but I believed him.
“We have no time, in actuality, so I might as well explain.” Drey dragged his hands down his face as he let out a despairing breath. “They wanted you to find Khaya. You might have led them right to her. In any case, they would have retrieved you and then felt justified in ousting Swanson and treating you however they wanted to afterward. And if they’d found Khaya, they would have just killed you, all of you, to replace you with automatons as soon as possible—because with Khaya back, she could activate Cruithear’s childlike automatons that would better adapt to the Words. And then they’d have had their small, all-powerful army of Words, not to mention a much larger automaton army. Cruithear is still building them, day after day, in anticipation of Khaya’s return.”
I found it harder to breathe. “I thought … I thought the adults were no good as soldiers.”
“In many situations they’re not, like any that require tactical maneuvers or much thinking. But as a mindless force used to overwhelm a target without regard for casualties taken on either side, they’re formidable. Unstoppable, with enough of them.”
“Gods,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me? About Jiang, about any of it?”
“If I had, I would have been charged with treason and unable to try to steer you away from this. It was bad enough I wasn’t encouraging you to find her—though that was my justification for placing you in Khaya’s apartment.”
It suddenly made sense now, why the City Council had allowed me to have Khaya’s things instead of listening to Ryse and cutting me off from my past. They wanted me to remember Khaya, to find her …
Drey squeezed his eyes closed. “The only way for us to have gotten out of this mess was for you to have proved I’d made you a capable Word of Death and rendered Jiang useless at the same time—by killing him. No one thought you would ever knowingly lead the City Council to Khaya, no matter how desperate or even cooperative you became. They hoped you’d side with Jiang and unknowingly cooperate by escaping. But if you chose not to, and yet you didn’t kill him to demonstrate your progress, either because you refused to or couldn’t handle it … ”
“Then they’d make me hand the Word over to a prototype automaton, killing me instead.”
“As a last resort. Like I said, no one on the Council really wants to chance that process going badly, so they’d probably try harsher training measures on you first, even at the risk of you having a mental breakdown. In any case, they preferred this to go one of two ways: you either killed Jiang, or turned against Eden City and led them to Khaya.”
The obvious truth of his words rang hollowly in my stomach. “Luft tried to get me to search for her, but then he changed his mind.”
Drey tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, his hands on his hips. Blood was splattered up there, but I knew he was looking distraught for other reasons. “I imagine he was put up to that by Carlin, but then Carlin changed his mind. Anyone who isn’t directly connected to the automaton project doesn’t know—or doesn’t believe—that they’re going to be used for the purpose of replacing the Words. Carlin knows, though, as a member of the City Council.”
“Then why would he change his mind and stop Luft from encouraging me to find her?”
Drey dropped his head to stare at me. “Why did Swanson break the rules when you were born and let me smuggle you out of the Athenaeum?”
“Because he loved Em, and … ” I stopped and another truth hit me. “Carlin and Luft are together.”
“I suspect, but I don’t know for sure,” Drey said. “Still, the fact is that if the City Council finds Khaya, Luft dies ahead of schedule.”
“But … Luft is barely eighteen! And Carlin … ” I’d only seen the Godspeaker a few times, and I supposed he wasn’t hideous, but he had to be in his late thirties. I suddenly remembered the conversation in which Brehan wondered whose “type” Luft’s was. Now I knew it was the older, Godspeaker-type.
Drey laughed, a desperation in his voice I’d never heard before. “Do you think now is the time to be judging their relationship?”
He was right, and besides, I was the product of a similarly clandestine work relationship.
I’d failed in every way. Failed to escape, failed to become a functional member of the Words. But Drey shouldn’t have had to go down with me so thoroughly.
“Did you have to shoot him?” I asked, sounding as desperate as him. “You could have just dragged me out of here.”
“That would have been interfering with the Council’s plan just as much. And Jiang never would have let us leave, not after finding out about you. He might have even tried to kill you instead of letting the Word of Death go back to Eden City. Besides, I told you: I would never ask you to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself.” He shrugged. “They would have killed him anyway, if you’d gotten cold feet on the assassination but didn’t leave with him, either because you’d guessed the City Council’s plot or feared what would happen to me if you left.” He let out another dark laugh.
Drey had been right, then—we might as well have been handcuffed together. “What actually happens now?”
“The City Council will no longer be able to track you to Khaya, at least.” Drey swallowed his sickly smile, looking faint. “I tried, Tavin. I tried so hard to save us. I’m sorry about the things I made you do, but I had to.”
Now this sounded like a goodbye speech.
My voice rose as I asked again, “What happens to us now, Drey?”
“I
expect I’ll be executed, and you’ll … ” He couldn’t finish. His eyes had filled with tears and he put his hand over his mouth as he looked at me. “I’m so sorry.”
I glanced around the office frantically. “Shouldn’t we be running, then? You said we don’t have much time, but maybe we can—”
He shook his head. “No, Tavin. It’s too late.”
“Then kill me.” I looked at the briefcase lying on the rug, then at him. “Do it. I’m begging you. I can’t go back there.”
Drey held my eyes, and a tear ran down his cheek. “I can’t. You’re the only son I’ll ever have, Tavin. But it’s not just that. You need to do something. Cruithear is the key; I’ve been trying to prepare you for this all along—”
But he didn’t even have time to finish. The doors blew open, cracking apart in several places as if a battering ram had hit them—perhaps Luft’s work. Then the entire room went dark in a way that meant Mørke had to be there.
I felt a piercing sting in my chest, and then my mind went dark too.
eighteen
When I next opened my eyes, I couldn’t see very well. There was enough light, but nothing seemed right, not in my body or whatever was around me. I blinked and tried to get my surroundings into focus for more than a half-second at a time, but they wouldn’t stop bouncing in and out.
I was used to waking up disoriented, but not for a while had I woken up this drugged. My arms felt numb and heavy, and when I tried to move them, nothing happened. Panicking, I tried again, jerking hard enough to practically yank my arm out of its socket. Only a metallic squeak rewarded my efforts as something shifted under me slightly.
I looked down at my body. On my chest, the pale blue of a hospital gown greeted me. There was the white of a sheet a bit beyond that, stretching all the way to my toes though I couldn’t quite see that far, and then the silvery shine of low metal bed rails to either side of me. I tried to kick my leg. Only my knee shifted under the sheet, but my foot didn’t move.
I knew I must be strapped to the bed. I just couldn’t feel the straps because of whatever they’d given me.
Who were they? Doctors? Where was I?
Hospital, I thought.
I felt a momentary flare of horror … but then, wasn’t I used to waking up in a hospital? Which hospital was this?
“Drey,” I said. Something serious had happened with Drey, but I couldn’t quite sort it out. I closed my eyes to try to remember. “Pie.” Where was Pie? I needed to go get her. I’d left her with someone …
“They’ll be here soon,” a female voice said.
The flare of horror turned into a flash flood. My eyes flew open.
Ryse was standing at my bedside where Drey should have been. And then I remembered why he wasn’t here. A lot of it, anyway, if not all: I hadn’t killed Jiang. Drey had done it, to keep me from leading the Athenaeum to Khaya, and he said he’d be guilty of treason. He hadn’t told me what was going to happen to me …
Ryse was what was going to happen to me. She was my punishment. Fear hit me so hard it would have flattened me if I hadn’t already been on my back.
“No,” I said. I screwed my eyes shut and turned my head away from her, willing her to go away and this to not be happening. “You’re not here.”
I didn’t hear anything for a moment, and I wondered if maybe she’d only been a horrible drug-induced hallucination. Gods, I hoped …
But then I heard a light snap and the most pungent smell imaginable hit my nose. No, it exploded in my face and burned down my throat. I gasped and yelled, my entire body jerking, trying to get away from the odor. I still couldn’t move. But now I could feel the cuffs biting into my wrists and ankles as I strained against them.
My eyes were open again. The room was suddenly in much better focus—and so was Ryse, leaning over me. My chest was heaving.
“Get away from me!” I cried.
“More alert now?” She leaned back, but only to throw something away. Whatever had smelled so bad, I imagined.
I was definitely more alert. My eyes shot around, recognizing, widening. This wasn’t a hospital room.
I was in the lab—the Death Factory, back in the Athenaeum. On a gurney, in almost the exact location as the man I’d killed. I even had an IV tube running from a bag of clear liquid into my vein, just like he’d had. I could see the needle taped to the crook of my arm where I’d knocked the sheet back with my struggling. I tried to reach the tube with my teeth to yank it out, but I couldn’t. The effort left me dizzy and my head collapsed back on my pillow.
“Get that out of me now,” I said, still breathing hard. “Get me out of here.”
Ryse only maneuvered the bed’s extendable IV stand farther out of my reach and tugged the sheet tighter over my chest, covering up my arm again with its tube and cuffs.
“What am I doing here?” I demanded. I tried to shake my head to clear it more, without much success.
“You’ll see,” she said with a slight smile.
With a shout, I started thrashing. I arched my back and twisted, trying to kick off the bed, anything I could manage to free myself. Even if I knocked the gurney over, that would be better than simply waiting. But the metal frame only bounced and swayed a little bit. Still, I kept writhing as long as I could.
By the time I stopped, I was completely exhausted, every bit of my strength gone and every bit as strapped down as before. My one small victory was that the sheet was a mess.
“I hate you,” I panted, staring at Ryse through the hair in my eyes. She hadn’t moved at all, and neither had her smile. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” I was nearly sobbing.
She reached to smooth my hair back. She had a black Necron glove on. Even so, I lashed out, trying to bite her. If I could puncture the glove …
She whipped her hand away in time to miss my gnashing teeth—and then around again, smacking me full-force across the face. My head snapped sideways, and dizziness and stars exploded in my skull. Even so, I lunged right back at her, still hoping to bite her. But I didn’t make it two feet off the mattress before the rebound slammed me back down.
I squeezed my eyes closed again, willing the dizziness to go away. That trick hadn’t worked on Ryse, though, and it didn’t work for this.
“Are you finished?” she asked, if I’d been a five-year-old throwing a tantrum.
The darkness spun and swooped behind my eyelids. Deep breaths …
“Answer me.”
I didn’t want the smelly stuff shoved in my face again, so I opened my eyes to glare hatred at her. If only looks could actually kill. “No. And I won’t ever be finished, not as long as you’re here. How about you take your glove off and pet me like last time. Come on, flirt with death, you sick bitch, and I’ll—”
She smacked me again. My lip split and I tasted copper. As soon as I’d blinked away enough stars to at least see where she was, I spat blood at her. At least that got her to step back in a hurry.
Her dark eyes flashed with fury, probably because I’d managed to gain some ground without being able to move. “This is no good at all. Dr. Bernstein’s training has only set you back. We have a lot to make up for.”
“I’ll kill you,” I said, spitting more blood across the front of my blue hospital gown. “I swear I’ll kill you.”
“Maybe someday … but not yet. Andre had his turn with you, but he failed. Now it’s mine. I see you’ve at least embraced your urge to use the Word of Death.”
“Only on you. Where’s Drey?”
Ryse’s smile grew. “Like I said, he’s coming. Once he arrives, we’ll give your willpower a test, shall we? Let’s call this my assessment of how far you’ve come.”
There was only one thing for me to do: I had to incapacitate myself. It would be hard to touch someone to kill them if I couldn’t lift my arms, and I’d already nearly dislocated one shou
lder. I twisted again, this time wrenching all of my force against that joint. Something tore inside, and I screamed.
“What are you doing?” Ryse’s voice came out higher pitched. She hadn’t expected this.
I ignored her and tried to pull against my other arm, but twisting onto my injured shoulder was agony. No matter how hard I tried, my body held back and I couldn’t get enough force.
“For the Gods’ sake,” she snapped, crossing her arms, “stop being so disobedient.”
It was the first time I’d heard her truly frustrated, and it brought a grin to my face even through the tears. “Then for the Gods’ sake, crawl into a dark hole somewhere and die.”
She looked like she wanted to hit me again, but I beat her to it, slamming my head down onto the bed. It was padded, of course, but I was pretty sure I could give myself a concussion and maybe some brain bleeding or something if I bounced it hard enough. I slammed it down again and again.
I heard Ryse yell for me to stop, but I wasn’t paying attention to her. I only had to focus through the explosions in my brain enough to keep going …
Warmth in my arm told me that wasn’t going to happen. In my peripheral vision, Ryse was squeezing something into the injection port of my IV tube. The warmth spread, leaving heaviness in its wake. Suddenly, no matter how hard I tried, I could barely lift my head, let alone bang it anymore.
Ryse yanked the syringe out of my tube, shaking her head in anger. “You annoying little bastard,” she hissed under her breath through gritted teeth.
“Not a bastard,” I gasped. “Have a father.”
She set the syringe on a tray and then peeled back each of my eyelids, shining a small flashlight in my eyes. I wasn’t sure if she was checking for head trauma or the effect of whatever she’d given me. In any case, I couldn’t turn away.
“I want you to be fully present for this,” she said. “You will be, for the most part, but a drop more muscle relaxant seems necessary.”
Lifeless Page 17