My arms are trembling so badly I can barely take aim. I try to think about my simulations, and how easy it became for me to shoot my imaginary enemies over time. This should be no different than that. I take a deep breath, but it does nothing to steady my nerves. Rin could kill me if she wanted to – or at the very least, incapacitate me so that she can keep me alive as another one of her experiments – but she doesn’t. I think she’s waiting to see how I react. Humans are nothing more than science projects to her, and everything I’ve done up until this moment has served only as her entertainment.
Anger boils underneath my skin. If she wants a reaction out of me, then fine, she’ll get one – and it’ll be the last one she ever sees. I put my finger on the trigger and will myself to pull back on it, but before I can fire, someone else does.
A bullet buzzes right through Rin’s ear before she even realizes she’s been shot at, and as she turns her head to look at her attacker, two more shots hit her – one grazing her cheek, and the other landing right in the middle of the chip in her forehead, shattering it.
She crumples to the ground, bits of machinery falling around her like the flesh and bone surrounding my father’s body; blood oozes steadily out of her wounds, and I remember with a twist in my gut that there is still a part of her that is human.
Flynn’s gun clatters to the ground and she sinks to her knees, her face expressionless.
I give myself only a moment to process all of what I’ve just seen before I walk to Flynn’s side and put my hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t react, and again I am left wondering how a Digit’s body works – if she can’t feel the weight of my hand on her, or if she’s just too shocked by her own actions to respond. I don’t know how many feelings she programmed herself with, but I do know that she’s feeling the worst of them right now.
“I’m sorry, Flynn. We should… we should go.” I remove my hand from her shoulder and hold it out for her to take. “Rin… She probably has backup coming. And I’m not sure how much longer Dori can…”
I turn to look at him, and I can’t finish my sentence. His arms – from his elbows to his fingertips – are so badly mangled they’re nearly unrecognizable; each time he pounds them on the ground another piece of him is torn off and goes flying the next time he raises his arms. He’s stopped screaming, but the hoarse whimpering sound he’s making is almost worse.
“Dori!” I call out to him, hoping he can hear me from wherever he is inside of his own mind. “It’s over; we can leave now. Rin and my… They’re gone. If we leave now we can get out of here before Division 6 comes. Please, Dori, you’ve got to get up.”
Flynn shakes her head like she’s coming out of a dream and looks confused for a moment before accepting my outstretched hand. She takes a deep breath and hauls herself to her feet, and I can almost feel her exhaustion roll from her body through my arm. She leaves her gun on the ground, but I holster my own; even though I’m useless with weapons, at least one of us needs to be armed just in case any of Rin’s stray soldiers arrives.
We walk to Dori and squat down on either side of him; he doesn’t look up to acknowledge our presence, but he stops slamming his hands down, so I know he can see us. I just have to hope he can hear us, too.
“Dori? We have to go now. Do you think you can walk?”
On his other side, Flynn says, “Before the Digits took control, the humans who created them built an underground safe-house, nicknamed the Divide, just in case their ‘experiments’ got too out of hand. It’s guarded, and the only Digits who know about it are those of us who’ve made pacts with the humans. Division 6 can’t get in, and we have tools there that can fix you – we can even help you make your own chip, so that you’ll never have to worry about losing control again.”
Dori is still for a moment, his eyes fixed on the ground, before he whispers, “…I can’t,” and the desperation in his voice makes my heart ache. I think he would be crying right now, if he were able to. Instead, he’s taking his negative emotions out on himself – destroying his own hands so that they can’t be used to hurt anyone else, and trying to gouge his chip out of his forehead instead of asking for the help he needed. I think he still blames himself for Holden’s death, and I don’t think that anything Flynn does to fix his body will ever be enough to mend his mind.
“Eve, I… I can’t come with you. I can’t risk… hurting someone I care about again.”
“But Flynn said – ”
“She doesn’t know,” he interrupts quickly. “Ask her. She doesn’t… She can’t know for sure if she can fix me. Bringing me along is risking the exposure of the Divide. I can’t let more people die. Not because of me.”
“Dori…”
My heart aches for him, because I know he’s right. I would say the same thing if I were in his situation, and logically, it doesn’t make sense putting so many human lives on the line just for the chance to save Dori. But admitting that aloud feels like giving up on him. We’ve been through so much together, and he’s done so much for me – I feel like I’m looking down at Fray and being forced to make the decision to let him die.
“Flynn, is it true?” I ask. “Is there really a chance you might not be able to fix him?”
I can tell from the expression on her face what her answer will be, but she says it anyway, and it hurts twice as much to have to hear it.
“Yes… I’m sorry. But with the damage he’s already done to his chip… I don’t know if it can be taken out without damaging his brain. I don’t know how Division 6 implants them, but it’s obvious that his is more than… skin deep.”
She gestures to his forehead, where the fringe of his hair has fallen to one side, revealing just a few of the numerous gashes crisscrossing his flesh. From this close, I can see clearly just how deep they run; I don’t know how Dori did it, but he managed to cut through so many layers of his own body that I’m surprised his skull didn’t crack. If the chip is wired even deeper than these cuts… then Flynn is right. It’s probably embedded so far in his brain that pulling it out is nearly impossible.
But we won’t know for sure unless we try. I don’t think I can live with myself if I just let him go without even attempting to do something to help him. But, then, if it doesn’t work…
I realize in that moment that I don’t have an answer – I can’t be the one to make this decision. Maybe it’s because I’m a coward, or maybe it’s just because I’m human, but I’ve already got enough guilt on my shoulders without adding Dori’s weight to the burden.
“I can’t come with you,” Dori repeats, softer this time. “I’m sorry. I wish I could, but I can feel them trying to get inside of my head. I don’t think I can fight them off. I’m sorry…”
“I…” I open my mouth, but I can’t find the right words to say. Instead, I remain silent, but I’m not the only one – the entire Division seems to have gone quiet. Flynn and I realize what’s happening at the same time, because we make eye contact, and even Dori lifts his head marginally.
“The shooting has stopped,” Flynn confirms; I look around, but we’re still too far away to see anything but the buildings around us. “They’re not fighting anymore. I don’t know who won, but we should get out of here before we have the chance to find out.”
Flynn stands, and I am about to follow suit when I feel a gentle pull on the hem of my shirt; I look down, and I see that Dori has somehow held out one of his hands and wrapped the remains of his fingers around it, keeping me still. I could easily pull away if I wanted to, but my curiosity stops me.
“Wait,” he says, letting me go but still keeping his hand held out. “You can’t just leave me here for them to find, especially now that I’m a traitor. Please.”
“But I thought you said…” I begin, and then I realize that he isn’t talking about wanting to come with us. “Oh. Oh. Dori, no… I can’t…”
“Please, Eve. I would do it myself, but I… I can’t. My chip won’t let me and I don’t even think I can hold a gun anymore…”<
br />
He lets his mangled hand fall back to the ground. My heart is pounding, and every word he says feels like a needle in my chest. Suddenly, the gun at my waist seems infinitely heavier.
Dori wants me to shoot him. No, he’s begging me to do it. He wants me to end his life, and with reasons like his… it would almost be crueler of me to refuse.
“You can’t… You can’t just ask me to do something like that!” I say loudly. “You of all people should know how it feels to have that kind of guilt on your conscience!”
I regret my choice of words as soon as they’ve left my mouth, but Dori doesn’t look upset about them; if anything, he looks defeated. I can’t see a single trace of the spark that drew me to him when we first met – all that’s left of him now is a mannequin with his face on it.
“Yes,” he says after a pause. “I know exactly how it feels. That’s why I need you to do this for me. Please. I can’t live with this weight on my shoulders anymore. I want to be with Holden, Eve. Please, help me.”
The bare sadness in his voice is almost more than I can handle. I turn my back on him and look at Flynn, who’s still standing a few paces away with her hands held tightly at her sides. I want to ask her to do this in my place, but I know that I can’t. She’s already felt enough grief today; I don’t know if she can take any more.
We make eye contact and she nods. Without speaking, she tells me what I need to do.
I try my best to shut my emotions down like some of the Digits can. I imagine that I’m in a simulation, and that Dori isn’t really here – that if I shoot him, he won’t really die. And it’s true, in a way; the thing curled up on the ground in front of me is not the same friend I used to have. He can never become that person again, and if Division 6 finds him, they’ll either change him into an emotionless monster or kill him in far more painful way than I ever could.
My hands are trembling as I pull out my gun; it’s the same gun that Dori gave to me because he couldn’t trust himself with it. I grip it tightly and try to picture an enemy from one of my sims; I imagine him leering down at me with a gun raised, or killing my little brother without a moment’s thought. But all I can see in front of me is Dori.
Then the scene changes, and I see Holden pleading for his life and an expressionless Dori taking it from him. I hear a gunshot, see a spray of blood, and feel hot tears streaming down my face.
It isn’t until I feel Flynn pull the gun from my raised hands that I realize where the shot that I heard really came from.
Chapter thirty-six
I don’t know what I expect to be waiting for us on the other side of the gate. To be honest, escaping is the last thing on my mind right now. All I can see is red, and no matter how hard Flynn pulls on my arms, I am too dizzy to stand upright. I crouch down and walk alongside her, but I pay no attention to where we are going. All I know is that one minute we’re outside in a street littered with corpses, and the next, we’re in an open field with a wall on one side of us and a blank expanse of land on the other.
The first thing I do is lean against the fence and heave until a thin stream of bile makes its way out of my throat. Flynn stands at my side and waits for my nausea to pass; she doesn’t say anything, but I’m pretty sure we’re both thinking about the same thing.
We both just killed our best friends – point-blank, in cold blood, without an ounce of hesitation. Sure, my brain was screaming at me the entire time to just walk away, but my finger was quicker than my legs. I shot Dori before I could even think about what I was doing. My body just acted on its own, doing what was easiest for me.
All I remember is visualizing Dori as my enemy, and after that, pulling the trigger became my body’s most natural response. I wonder if Flynn felt the same way when she shot Rin. Did she even try to remember the good parts of their relationship, or was she too focused on the things that would make it easier for her to pull the trigger?
The grass is sparse and half-dead on this side of the fence. There are a few trees in the distance, but mostly all I can see is flat land. I think I expected buildings and people – a small utopia in the middle of this awful war. I am disappointed, but a little relieved at the same time.
I hear a voice from somewhere beyond the trees, but it isn’t until it gets closer that I realize that it’s saying my name.
“Everly!” the voice calls out; it’s loud and shrill – a girl’s voice – and more than a little familiar. “Everly! Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re alright!”
I look up just in time to see a shock of bright orange hair before I am pulled into the tightest hug I think I’ve ever received. My muscles ache tremendously, and my arms are still shaking so badly I have trouble raising them to return the gesture, but it feels so good to see her again that I barely even notice the pain.
“Crissy!” My voice is muffled somewhere between her shoulder and her neck, but I manage to turn my head just enough for her to hear me. “What’s going on? How did you get here?”
She lets go of me and pulls away, grinning. Once her bushy hair is out of my line of sight, I can clearly make out a small group of people coming towards us, following the path behind her. They look tired and worn – but probably a lot better than I look – but alive and, for the most part, uninjured.
The exception is Crissy, who blinks at me with one bright green eye and one scarred, half-lidded opaque eye that she obviously can’t see out of. Though her injury has healed, I can still distinctly remember how it looked when it was fresh – her torn eyelid, blood running down her cheek – and even now I can see the ghost of that image on her face. It’s like my brain won’t let me forget how much I have hurt the people I love.
Following a few paces behind her are Roma, Andon, and Cyrus. Roma has a few scars on either side of her face, and Andon is sporting what looks like a half-healed bruise along his jaw, but otherwise they look far better than they did the last time I saw them. Cyrus is walking beside the couple, limping slightly and keeping a reasonable distance.
Roma pulls me into a hug as soon as she reaches me, softer and more gently than her daughter. Her body is warm and comforting, and I feel safe for the first time in months. I’ve been lost and scared for so long, it’s nice to finally have someone to lean on. If Roma can forgive me for the things I’ve done, then maybe I can try to forgive myself, too.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she says softly; “I’m so glad you’re safe. We’ve all been so worried about you.”
“I – ” I begin, but the words catch in my throat. After everything that’s happened to me since I last saw them, what can I say? They shouldn’t have been worried about me; I’m not the one who was in danger.
“It’s good to see you,” Andon interrupts, and I can see from the slight smile on his face that he is trying to fill the silence I left. He may not know exactly what I’ve experienced, but I think he understands more than the others do. He pats me on the back in what I think must be his version of a hug, and I feel so warm with relief and happiness that I forget for a moment where I am and why I’m here.
Why was I so distraught just a minute ago? Because I’ve lost my family? No, my family is right here – safe and alive and welcoming. I didn’t realize how important they are to me until I thought I’d lost them, but now that they’re here, I understand that they were there for me more than my real family ever was.
But, then, why does it feel like something is missing?
After Roma and Andon step back I look around, and I see it right away. Why didn’t I realize it sooner?
“Roma?” I ask without looking at her. “Where’s Fray?”
Suddenly, the entire atmosphere changes from bright to gloomy. Roma’s expression turns grim, and I can tell that Cyrus is purposely avoiding looking at me.
I can’t believe I didn’t notice my little brother’s absence earlier. My mind was too filled with elation at the reappearance of my friends that I think I tried to block out the negative aspects of the situation. I was too happy to see Crissy aliv
e to worry too much about her sight, too thrilled to be in Roma’s arms again to pay much attention to the scars on her face. And I was so glad that finally, finally, something in my life was going right, that I didn’t see just how wrong it really was.
When Roma doesn’t answer me, I ask again, “Where’s Fray? Why isn’t he with you guys?” My voice rises in volume with each unanswered question until I’m nearly shouting. “Where is he? What’s happened to him?”
Crissy flinches at my tone, but I don’t let up. All of a sudden, everyone is avoiding my eyes – everyone except for Flynn, who looks just as confused as I am.
“Sweetheart,” Roma begins gently, like I’m a loose cannon. I don’t blame her, though – the way I’m shouting, I probably sound like one. “We don’t know where – ”
“He’s gone,” Cyrus cuts her off shortly. Roma folds her hands at her waist and falls silent.
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“Division 6 has him. I expect they will likely be using him as bait to lure you back to their training camp. Now that Tesla is aware of your situation and Division 4’s plans for you, I don’t think she will rest until she has you on her side.”
“But… I would never choose her side! She can’t honestly expect, after everything she’s put me through…”
Cyrus shrugs like he’s trying to look impartial, but I notice that he still won’t make eye contact with me.
“Not even if your little brother’s life is on the line?”
It feels like time stands still. My heart pounds, and the rushing of my blood through my veins is all I can hear. I am acutely aware of how sweaty my hands are, but how cold the rest of my body feels.
All I can think about is Fray – alone, frightened, and helpless. And, once again, it is entirely my fault.
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