And then I muttered a Word and dropped through a hole that opened right under my feet. On the floor below, I narrowly missed a counter in what looked like another lab—one filled with white gas. Pie yelped as I landed straight on floor tiles, probably because I pulled her fur to keep hold of her. I almost yelped too as the impact jarred my feet and buckled my weak legs. But I kept my mouth closed and the breath in my lungs.
There were masked security guards in the hazy room, and yet they hadn’t been expecting me. Before they could raise their guns, a black spiderweb of death caught them. I only regretted it because it used up the first bit of my held breath.
Something metal grazed the back of my neck—a dart fired from my own stupid hole that I’d left open in the ceiling. I ducked, tucking and rolling farther away, opening my mouth again to say, “Tunnel!” Another bit of breath was gone. I didn’t have much left.
A tunnel widened in the floor, and I dropped down with Pie, landing on dirt this time. I was under the hospital again, but only gas had come with me, no fresh air. I blocked the hole overhead, plunging us into darkness, and blindly expanded the tunnel as far as I could with just about the last of my breath. And then I ran.
By the time I ripped another air hole open overhead with a final croak from my struggling throat, my lungs were about to implode with the desire to breathe. My vision sparkled in the darkness, and Pie was limp in my hands. It was dark up above—an empty room of some kind—and thank the Gods there was no more gas. I inhaled just enough mixed air to close the tunnel behind us, sealing in the gas, but even that blacked me out for a second, bringing me to my knees.
The stuff was strong. Definitely knockout gas. I kept my head down, gasping and blinking, trying to stay conscious. Then I listened at Pie’s chest for her fast heartbeat and quick, shallow breaths. She was alive.
I waited only long enough to be sure I could stand, and then I closed the hole overhead except for an air vent no bigger than my fist. One hand against the wall, one holding Pie to my chest, I continued to move sightlessly in the darkness down a tunnel I kept having to shape in front of me—in the opposite direction from where I’d come, of course. Not that I knew anything more about where I was headed than that. Tu had some sort of built-in GPS as the Word of Earth, but I definitely didn’t.
Since I was under the hospital’s deep multilevel basement, I didn’t hit anything but dirt as I moved forward. Or at least I couldn’t feel anything but dirt with my extended hand. That was convenient, but going higher would probably be worth the risk of bumping into something else. The air was already feeling stretched down here, and it would be useful to see where I was going.
Besides, I was pretty sure I needed a car.
twenty-three
When I resurfaced, I came up through a building’s foundation and then into a dim basement. Heading up from there, I found myself half in a brick wall and half in what smelled like an elderly woman’s closet, though it was too dark to tell. I reshaped the brick wall into enough of a hole to make sure someone’s living room wasn’t on the other side, blinked in the blinding light, and then I widened it the rest of the way. I stepped out into an alley. It was a nice alley, as these things went, outside of the Athenaeum but still in the wealthy sector of Eden City. I closed the wall behind me.
It was afternoon, sunny. Early spring. Traffic hummed in the warm air beyond the alley. The rest of the world was carrying on like nothing had happened, oblivious to the chaos in the Athenaeum’s hospital.
Pie hadn’t yet woken up, but she was still breathing.
Without having any idea how I was doing it, I rearranged something—maybe the molecules—in my black undershirt, turning it red. I also turned my Necron pants into something resembling denim. I made my hair straight and blond instead of wavy and brown—likely looking like an idiot, but I didn’t care—and borrowed enough plastic and scrap metal from a nearby trash can to shape myself a decent pair of sunglasses, though I had no idea if the lenses were actually UV resistant. I also took an extra bit of metal with me when I strolled out onto the sidewalk, whistling.
It didn’t take me long to find a suitable car. Choosing one was like being back in Brehan’s apartment playing his video game: a red Porsche, a black Aston Martin, or a green Lamborghini? I settled for something a little less flashy and strode up to the driver’s side of an older silver Mercedes-Benz convertible, one that still had a keyhole instead of a keypad.
It only took closing my eyes and focusing for a second to feel the shape of the lock, and another second, plus a Word, to shape the key. The car alarm went off as I slipped inside, but starting the car cut it off immediately.
After laying Pie on the passenger seat, I dropped the top on the convertible to get us some air and sun. Then I pulled out into traffic. No doubt I was driving under the influence of a whole cocktail of drugs, including a sedative and a partial dose of knockout gas, but I was pleased to note I didn’t even swerve in my lane. As pleased as I could be, anyway.
I briefly considered trying to go back for Brehan, but for the moment it made more sense to get out of Eden City. Not only to get the Word of Shaping as far away as possible, but there was something else nagging at the back of my mind.
I no longer had any drugs. I would have taken some with me if I could have—the mood-flattening kind, not the sedatives. But they’d never given me a supply. I’d only taken my morning dose today, which meant I had until this evening before they started to wear off.
As I flowed through traffic with the wind in my hair, the sunlight glinting off the silver hood, nothing much could have made me feel afraid. And yet the thought of facing what was hidden deep inside of me came as close to scaring me as possible. I knew that by the time I came down off of the drugs—or erupted out of them—I had to be far away from everyone.
When I flew to pieces, a lot of things might come with me.
I drove to the airport. I wasn’t planning on flying anywhere, but it was as near to the outskirts of the city as one could get without having to go through a checkpoint to leave. After parking in one of the long-term outdoor lots, I searched inside the glove box and found a sleek little flashlight with plenty of battery power. I picked up Pie and ditched the car, walking only far enough away to duck between two tall SUVs before I dropped into another tunnel in the ground.
I walked under the border of Eden City, carrying Pie and the flashlight. I knew it was only a few miles to a small French town on the other side. There, I closed my tunnel behind me and stole another car, this one with French plates.
Trading cars every few towns, I worked my way southeast into the French countryside, climbing higher into the hilly terrain beneath the Alps. The air grew cooler out of the city, but it was still spring and the snow was melting on the mountains, the fields turning green. This was the exact territory that Khaya and I had crossed at night during my first escape from Eden City, in the fall, and I remembered stumbling across a few vacant-looking country houses with her.
Pie woke up in the early evening as I drove in search of a place like one of those. I pulled over to pet her and talk to her, but she only looked at me and then curled up, going back to sleep.
Watching her, something in my chest twinged almost painfully. That wasn’t normal. With another vague feeling, which I recognized as worry, my eyes shot back to the road drenched in the red light of sunset. I stepped on the gas. I needed to hurry.
I turned down smaller, residential dirt roads as the sunlight faded, searching for a house that was isolated enough and, of course, empty. I had a couple of near misses: a hidden car parked at the end of a long driveway, a dog barking from inside a dark house, lights turning on after I pulled up. By the time I found a silent, shadowy two-story house next to a field, the moon was rising and I was feeling borderline frantic. I focused on the sensation, nearly letting it overwhelm me in an attempt to let nothing else in. I snatched Pie off the seat, leapt out of th
e car, and ran up to the porch.
Gods, I could run again, which meant the sedative was nearly gone. I would have even settled for another sedative. Anything to dull what was coming.
I pounded on the front door and nobody answered. I didn’t bother shaping a key. I shaped the lock instead, blowing it open. Kicking inside, I scanned the front room. No dogs or people or strange noises. Everything was dark and smelled a little musty.
I laid Pie on the floral-patterned couch and rushed into the kitchen, throwing open white cupboards until I found a can of cat food. It would do well enough. I started looking for a can opener until I remembered I could reshape the damned can. I made it into a bowl, softening any sharp edges, and snatched a real china bowl out of the cupboard to fill with water. After setting both in front of Pie, who was now awake and looking around at the unfamiliar surroundings in sleepy confusion, I wasted no time in getting the hell outside.
I was hyperventilating as I stood on the porch. The stars were beginning to twinkle in the sky. My fingers couldn’t stay still; I kept flexing them at my sides and making fists.
Farther. I needed to be farther from the house.
My throat was tight and pressurized, like I was going to puke. But I forced air into my lungs and vaulted off the porch. Running for the field, I could feel it coming, swelling inside of me like a dam about to overflow and sweep me off my feet. I made it a decent way into the grass before I collapsed.
On my hands and knees, I didn’t puke.
I screamed. The sound tore through the quiet night, echoing across the field.
I screamed, and I screamed. I sat back on my heels and gripped my head in my hands as if I could shove the feelings back inside, along with the memories those feelings were dragging out of me … and I screamed again.
I’d killed people. So many people, in so many ways. There were so many screams, echoing mine. So much blood. I opened my eyes enough to see my red T-shirt and remembered being drenched in blood.
I ripped the shirt from my back, literally tearing it off and hurling it away from me. And then I threw up. But since I hadn’t eaten much recently, it was mostly dry-heaving, so powerful I thought my ribs would split.
Just as I was spitting into the dirt, thinking the worst was over, I remembered Drey: him telling me he loved me. The way he’d looked at me when he’d asked me with his eyes to kill him. His face turning purple. The way he’d simply stopped, ceased to be, after I told him to.
The screaming began again.
The memories never paused: Jacques, as his eye burst red. Ryse, as she disintegrated. Cruithear, as she collapsed. I hadn’t used the Word of Death on her, but I’d asked her to die just the same.
I’d convinced a girl to die. She’d been a prisoner as much as I’d been, and for far longer. And then she’d died for me, while I’d gone free.
I was a monster. A monster through and through.
My screams seemed to shake the trees, vibrate in the ground. Some part of me realized they actually were, because I was shouting Words without realizing it and punching the ground at the same time. My fists left deep indentations in the earth and sent black webs of death crackling out around me. The grass was dying across the entire field. What good spring had done for it was completely undone. Beyond undone. I was turning the field into a wasteland as dead as Khaya’s garden.
I would have punched it again, but then I heard something. Looking up, I spotted a small black and white shape running toward me from the house, barking.
I’d probably ruined the front door’s ability to stay closed, blasting it open like that.
“No, Pie, stay!” I cried. My throat was so wrecked the words were barely understandable, but I’d never taught her to stay anyway. So I fell over on my side, curling my body around my hands. The dead grass stabbed into my bare skin, but I didn’t care. I had to protect her. From me.
But the memories were too strong, wracking my body. Too sharp, flaying me until I felt like I had to be dripping with as much blood as they were. The Words were in my mouth, on the tip of my tongue, wanting to come out with more screams.
A desperate thought came to me: they were too strong. Too sharp. But maybe I could change them. Cruithear had said she’d reshaped her memories.
I spoke Words, but they weren’t the ones that had been pressing against my lips. And I didn’t shout them at the field. I whispered them to the darkness, to the deaths, to the blood. “Shrink. Dull.”
And the memories quieted. The screams were still there, but they were distant; muffled. The red of the blood was less vivid.
At some point I heard, and then felt, a nose snuffling around my head. And then a puppy’s tongue, licking the tears off my cheeks. Her breath smelled like cat food.
For whatever reason, it was that stupid detail that brought me back to myself. I lifted my head enough to look at Pie, her black-and-white splotched face coming into focus. She whimpered, and then bounced on her front paws, letting out a little yip.
And then I was sitting up, hugging her to my chest. She licked my face like mad, as if trying to wipe away the tears as fast as they were coming.
“Oh Gods, Pie, oh Gods,” I said over and over again. My throat mangled my words along with my voice, but the sound was better than the screaming. Better than the Words.
When I felt like I could stand, I carried her back to the house, my legs shaking underneath me. The front door was definitely hanging open, so I wedged it closed with one of my boots. I figured I shouldn’t collapse right there on the couch in case someone came bursting in, like the owners of the house or worse, so I went upstairs. I found a linen closet where there was room enough for me to stretch out underneath the bottom shelf. I crawled in, pulled Pie inside with me, dragged some sheets and towels over us, and nudged the folding doors closed.
I slept, somehow. But the nightmares reached me, slipping around the foggy pane of glass I’d put up between myself and my memories. And they were even worse than the original, unfiltered version of reality.
In my dreams, I opened Chantelle’s wrists with the Word of Death while she cried and begged me to stop. I strangled Cruithear with my bare hands, her red hair falling over my wrists, and when she tried to breathe I reached into her mouth and tore out her tongue. Ryse smiled at me as her eyes dribbled out of her sockets like tears. Drey came at me with his purple face, trying to stab me with a scalpel, but I always ended up killing him as I tried to fight him off. And so many others … I killed. I was drowning in blood at one point, choking on it.
Several times I woke up screaming. But Pie was always there, sniffing at me, chewing on my fingers, licking my face, and reminding me that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t a monster … until I eventually fell back to sleep.
When I awoke, hoarse and puffy-eyed, to predawn light glowing through the cracks of the closet doors, I knew what I needed to do.
I needed someone else to remind me that I wasn’t a monster. Another human, who could recognize what was left of the human in me. And if anyone could do it, Khaya could.
I needed to find her.
The fact that my plan might turn the rest of the world against Eden City was just a bonus.
twenty-four
Swanson had given me the idea, really.
The house had a computer that was set up for video calls, which meant it had a camera and a microphone. I booted it up and went to find a shirt. From the upstairs bedroom closet, I borrowed a white tee and blue long-sleeved plaid shirt that were made for someone shorter and pudgier than me, but a little shaping fixed that. I also fixed my ridiculous straight blond hair in the bathroom mirror, changing it back to normal.
Next on my short mental list was a suitable prop. Outside, sitting on the ground next to the porch stairs, I discovered a flowerpot filled with some newly sprouting grass. I lifted the pot and carried it inside. Plunking it on the desk, I sat down in the comput
er chair, opened a recording program, and clicked the record button.
“Hi,” I said. My voice was pretty rough. Maybe I should have found a throat lozenge too. “My name is Tavin Barnes. I’m the Word of Death and, what do you know, I’m also the Word of Shaping.”
Demonstration time. I looked at the potted grass and told it to die, with my hand a good two feet away from it. Blackness shot across the open space and did the job in a half a second.
“Need more proof?” I asked the camera. “Well, take a good look, because this is the last time anyone is going to see.” I pivoted in the chair and bared my back to my shoulders. I counted to five and then yanked my shirt down. Spinning back around, I scooted up to the desk again. “See that? Yeah, I couldn’t make sense of it either. I might not be the world’s best reader, but I think it’s too mixed and moving for even a Godspeaker to make much out of.”
I’d made that interesting discovery in the bathroom mirror—the Words running together like bleeding ink, Words of both Death and Shaping. I wasn’t sure, but I guessed it would take a team of Godspeakers years of studying me to figure out how to use me. An opportunity I had no intention of giving them.
I shrugged at the camera. “If you didn’t think this was possible, well … neither did I. Nor did Eden City, for that matter. And so I’m not there anymore. I got out, because they can’t control me anymore. But they tried for a long time, and took almost everything that mattered from me.”
I closed my eyes for a second, until I could continue. “They do whatever they want with the Words, just like they do whatever they want with the rest of the world. The Godspeakers hold the real power. We’re prisoners there.” I leaned back in the chair and folded my fingers together on the desk. “And it’s time for it to end.”
My voice hardened as I imagined addressing the City Council. “It’s time for you, Eden City, to stop pushing everyone around with strength that doesn’t belong to you. Four of us Words have escaped now … five, if you count me twice. You’re losing your power. No one has to listen to you anymore. And the remaining four Words should be free if they want to be. Give them the choice, or else face consequences like this—like me.”
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