by Meg Collett
“Here.” Maddox grabbed a glass of water from his desk. He slipped an arm behind her shoulders and sat her upright so she could take a long drink of water. She coughed a bit when she finished.
“What happened?” she asked, her throat sore and scratchy. Tendrils of hair, crispy with dried sweat, stuck to the side of her face.
Maddox’s face creased with guilt, and he removed his arm from her back. Various thermoses of coffee littered his desk and accounted for his twitchy fingers and the restless tapping of his foot against the floor.
“Maddox.” Wren grew frightened, almost panicked. “Is the party over? Why am I here?”
“We finished filming hours ago. The editors are putting the footage together for tomorrow’s episode.”
“What?” Her ears rang and her breath rattled in her throat. She coughed and almost choked. “It’s over? What time is it?”
“Calm down, Wren. Just breathe.”
“Tell me!”
“It’s one-thirty in the morning.”
Something cold settled in her stomach. “No, that’s not right. It can’t be that late.”
“It is.”
“What the hell—”
“I know. I know.” He held up his hands. “I told Hutton you’d be pissed, but she didn’t think you could pull it off.”
“Pull what off? What happened? I don’t remember anything.”
He cringed. “We needed a specific Sloane Lux for her party. You’re good, but we didn’t think even you could portray a serked-out Sloane.”
It took a few tries for her to wrap her mind around “a serked-out Sloane.” Then it clicked into horrifying place. “You drugged me. You gave me serk.”
In the face of her too-calm words, Maddox turned green. For good measure, he took an antacid from the top of his desk and munched on it.
She forced her aching body to sit up so she could look him square in the eye. “Never again,” she said first, because that was most important. “If you need something like that for another episode, we’ll film it during the morning shots so I can do different takes until we get it right.”
“I understand. We—”
“Second, wasn’t that dangerous?” Her voice rose; her calm had only lasted so long, and now the cap was blowing off. “What if I’d started talking about VidaCorp and the alterations? I could have brought up Sloane’s death!”
“Uh, well. About that. You couldn’t exactly talk …”
“What?”
“You, ah—” Maddox reached for another antacid. “I mean, we gave you enough so you couldn’t form sentences—or say actual words.”
A tight fist of terror clenched in Wren’s belly. What had she gotten herself into? Maddox and Hutton had put her in a state where she couldn’t even communicate, and she remembered none of it. She’d spent too much of her life counting down her days. Each second mattered, and she’d lost hours tonight.
“Show me the footage,” she demanded.
“What?” Clearly, Maddox had been expecting a different reaction.
“From the party. Show me what I did.”
“Are you sure? You might not want to see. I mean, it might be best if you don’t—”
“Show me. Please.”
The “please” did him in, as she knew it would. He spun around in his chair to face the central screen on his desk. “You’re sure?” he asked again, his hand hovering above the touchpad.
“Just show me.”
Reluctantly, he called up the footage from the start of the party. She leaned forward on the couch to watch and gripped the armrest to keep from spilling onto the floor.
“I’ll keep the audio off.”
Wren had expected one feed, but multiple angles of her face spread out across all of Maddox’s screens. Around a hundred feeds, she estimated. Her stomach churned, but she forced herself to keep watching. She needed to know what had happened.
On the screens, her drugged self stumbled into the main room, looking around at the partygoers and swirling lights. Wren remembered Hutton pushing her, likely aiming for a not-so-subtle entrance.
“Who are all these people?” she asked, her eyes trained on the feeds.
“Extras. We needed a crowd. A party isn’t exciting if there’s only a few people in attendance. Plus, it cultivates a sense of longing in the viewers to be included.”
Back on the screens, Wren had wandered farther into the party. She didn’t need the close-up shot of her face to see the serking drug had kicked in. Her eyelids drooped, hooding her eyes, and her mouth twisted into a sloppy sneer. She tripped and sprawled onto an extra, who set her back on her feet with a nervous laugh.
Wren remembered the rush of warmth and the fuzzy contentment, but the feeds showed a much different emotion.
On camera, her face twitched as she shouted something at him that likely came out in a garbled mess. She shoved him. The extra’s drink sloshed over the rim of his glass, and he fell into the people around him. Wren laughed and turned to shove the person closest to her.
Foster came up to her then. He said something to the extras that made them laugh and then pulled her away—to the drink table. Instead of pouring her something from the liquor bottles, he handed her a glass of water. She drank it all in one long gulp. He said something to her, his mouth close to her ear. Wren picked up the glass ladle from the punch bowl and slammed it against his face.
Wren averted her eyes from the screens.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Maddox said quickly. “You barely got him.”
“What did he say?”
Maddox gritted his teeth, showing the first hint of displeasure. “He wanted to know if you’d taken care of the footage from earlier. We’ll talk about that stunt later.”
Security peeled her off Foster. He was screaming at her. The entire party had stilled around them. The burly security guy—not Bode, because he was nowhere in sight—was telling her something, but she strode away before he finished talking.
The cameras followed her as she parted the crowd, the extras stepping far away from her as she passed. Maddox sped up the footage. Wren wrecked her way through the party for two hours. Security had to keep intervening, and she left a wake of torn clothes and scratched skin behind her. Maddox slowed the footage back to normal when she went upstairs and tried to go into a black hallway, but a handler redirected her into the billiard room. Someone shut the door.
Wren stood in the room with Viksyn, Beau, and Roman.
Wren didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t pry her eyes from the video as Roman realized what was happening, and of course he would; he knew the signs of serking from dating Sloane for so long. Instead of shouting at the crew and going crazy like she’d expected, he walked up and spoke calmly to her.
“What is he saying?”
Maddox didn’t turn up the sound, as if keeping it muted lessened the brutality. “He told you it would be okay. That you were with him and you were safe. He, uh, said not to be scared, because he had you.”
“Did he know the plan to drug me ahead of time?” Wren whispered, her eyes glued to the screens.
“Yes.”
Wren’s breath left her in a choked gasp. He’d known what they would do to her and hadn’t warned her.
Roman tried to steer her out of the billiard room, but she rammed her hands into his chest, shoving him against the wall. His head smacked against the wood paneling. For a second, he stood there, stunned, then he touched the back of his head. When he focused back on her, he blinked, fighting back tears. They never fell, but the struggle was evident in the way his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He shook his head, speaking to Wren or himself, she couldn’t tell.
“There,” Wren said. “What is he saying now?”
“He said you were going to go too far one day. If you didn’t stop, you were going to kill yourself.”
Wren watched as she launched herself at Roman and clawed at his face. Beau rushed into frame to haul her off Roman, but she kicked and screamed and
thrashed and hit anyone within range. Her fist collided with the camera, knocking it askew, and the footage jerked.
Wren’s gaze swept to another screen showing a close-up of Vik. She was sobbing as if she was witnessing the downfall of a friend, like she was already mourning Sloane’s death, but she’d probably laughed with delight once the cameras turned off.
On another screen, Security pinned Wren to the floor, and it took three men to hold her down. Wren felt the bruises on her arms without checking. She slumped back onto the couch and whispered, “That’s enough.”
Maddox cut the screens as fast as he could, but Wren had enough time to watch Roman sink to the floor. Vik hurried over and wrapped her long arms around him. He turned his shredded face into her shoulder to hide the flow of tears, but a camera had caught it. Sloane’s boyfriend and former best friend lost in grief would be the episode’s money shot. Even Beau came over to crouch beside Vik. He brushed her hair back as she and Roman cried together.
The screen went black.
“You’re going to kill her.”
Wren’s whispered words filled the room. Maddox swiveled his chair to face her. He wasn’t surprised she’d figured out his plan and the reason why Hazen hadn’t cared if Sloane searched Foster’s room for serk.
None of it had ever mattered.
“You’re going to kill her, you asshole.”
“It’s not so simple.”
“It’s incredibly simple, actually.” She flung her hand toward the screens, her voice rising with every word. “Just tell me why the hell this matters when this show is supposed to spew propaganda for Beau and VidaCorp.”
“You want the truth?”
“Yes,” Wren growled, her fists clenching in her lap. She wanted to believe the blinding rage was an aftereffect of the serk, but she knew. This rage was inside her, in her heart. She was, after all, her father’s daughter.
“We’re using the show to portray Sloane’s decline. During the live finale in two weeks, we plan to show her serk overdose. Nothing graphic, mind you. It’ll be tasteful. The show will end early when you’re ‘found’ unconscious. Viewers will see the cameras push in and Medical rush onto the scene. Roman will be there with you, in the room. The news feeds will report her death right after, in a special alert.”
The words chilled Wren and froze her rage in place. It was so calculated and efficient. Tidy, like death should never be. When she spoke, she barely heard the loosely formed words trickle from her lips. “This isn’t right.”
“I know it’s hard to hear, but this is best for the citizens who loved Sloane. They need to say goodbye to her too. By revealing her death this way, they’ll understand why she made the choices she did.”
“No one can possibly understand why she did what she did. Only she could.”
“Exactly!” Maddox nodded as if she were agreeing with him. “Sloane was too young and too full of life to be taken from them so suddenly. We can show the viewers a better reality—one that’s easier to swallow.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
His confusion was telling enough. Maddox truly thought his show could help the world heal after Sloane’s death. And maybe it could. But he was wrong.
He’d underestimated VidaCorp, just as she had.
“Maybe that’s part of it,” she said, “but that’s not the real reason VidaCorp is revealing her death this way.”
Maddox shook his head, still not understanding. “We—”
“It’s kind of you to try so hard for her, but VidaCorp only wants her fame to draw in viewers for Beau, and once they’ve stolen every pound of usefulness from her flesh, they’ll show her overdose. What better way to boost Beau’s approval ratings than by having a beloved celebrity overdose on television? An overdose that a daily Pacem pill could have prevented.”
Maddox reached for the bottle of antacids on his desk and thumbed a few into his mouth. He barely chewed them before choking them down. His hand was trembling as he sat the bottle aside.
“You know I’m right,” she pressed.
“I never wanted to think about it too closely. I guess I knew, on some level, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. All I can do is give them the best footage possible—for Sloane.”
“You can make it look as pretty as you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that VidaCorp is turning a person’s death into propaganda.” Wren struggled to her feet and swayed dizzily.
“You’re taking it too personally. She’s gone, Wren. It’s not happening to you.”
She paused at his office door, her hand resting on the doorknob. She glanced back at him and said, her voice just as quiet as his, “It’s happening to all of us, and we’re just letting it.”
30:
Wren walked, loose-footed with exhaustion, down the black hallway to her room. She slipped through the door, and once her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she spotted Roman’s form in the bed. His breathing was quiet and his body too still.
“Roman,” she whispered into the darkness between them.
“I’m awake.”
“Let me see your face.”
He rolled over and his eyes gleamed in the moonlight, but she couldn’t see the bruises. “It’s fine, Wren. Really.”
She crept closer to the bed, the steps taking an aching amount of time before her knees brushed against the edge of the mattress. From there, she glimpsed the edges of his torn skin and the darkening blush of bruises. “Why didn’t they alter it?”
He pushed onto his elbow, and she fought the urge to shrink away from the evidence of what she’d done. Was this how her father felt the morning after getting black-out drunk, unable to remember how his knuckles had gotten so red?
“Fixing it wouldn’t make for a good live show.” He sat farther up on the bed, his back against the dark suede headboard. “Wren, I wanted to tell you about the birthday party, but—”
“It’s okay. I get it. We’re both trying to survive. Don’t apologize for that, because I won’t.”
There it was, the ugly, horrible truth. It had been inside her all along, hiding beneath the veil of anger and sense of injustice she hid behind. As the reality of Sloane’s second death set in, Wren could admit to herself that her survival surpassed whatever obligations she’d created in her head for Sloane Lux.
As if he could see the moment she accepted the horrible person she was, Roman opened his arms to her. “Come here.”
His chest was bare, his muscles contracting as he spoke in his low, raspy rumble. Wren kicked off her thigh-high boots and went to him. She slid across the silk and fur blankets and wiggled into the nook beneath his arm, her head falling against his chest in the cleanest fit of a puzzle piece ever.
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” she whispered. She wanted to say, I didn’t do it. I didn’t know I was doing it, but she knew excuses meant little in the face of bruises. Excuses were nothing but moments between bursts of pain.
His lips skimmed the top of her hair in the softest of touches. “What did you just tell me? Don’t ever apologize for surviving,” he repeated, his breath twining through her hair. “Are you okay? I tried to find you after Security removed you from the party, but Maddox said you were sleeping it off. He wanted to keep an eye on you.”
“I’m fine.” Was she? Only a few hours ago, when she was condemning Bode, she’d thought more highly of herself. “Maddox told me the plan for Sloane. They’re planning something awful.”
Roman’s heart thumped against her ear. “What is it?”
“They’re going to show her overdosing during the finale’s live show.”
“I guess it isn’t enough to exploit her fame,” he growled. “They have to exploit her demons too.”
“I always knew VidaCorp needed her fame for the show and Beau’s politics. I just didn’t realize they were going to use her death as a campaign slogan for Pacem.”
In the silence, Wren conjured her greatest fear: Roman coming up with a plan to keep VidaCorp
from exploiting Sloane and needing her help to pull it off. She’d have to tell him—show him—how horrible she was by letting it happen. Sloane was already dead, but Wren had a chance to live.
Eventually, he said, “Pacem won’t be the savior the world thinks it is.”
Wren leaned back to see his face. In the moonlight coming through the opaque window, Roman looked almost silver and even more wolfish. In a flash, she remembered her dream from so long ago: the wolf on the field of ice.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think one drug can fix all the world’s problems? Or do you think a cure-all pill that suppresses emotions will make the world’s problems feel better?”
“But it will save people.” They both heard her unspoken words: It will save me.
Roman nodded, and Wren let out a breath. His fingers drifted through her hair and grazed the skin along the back of her neck.
“There’s something else.” It was her heart speaking, not her head. Her head told her no, screamed it, but she didn’t listen.
He lowered his hand from her hair. “What is it?”
It’s not too late. Say it was nothing. Say you’re tired. Close your eyes and say nothing.
“After my alterations, Bode and Hazen told me something about the show that no one knows. Not even Hutton.” Wren paused, but Roman remained deadly quiet. “They believe the Whitebirds have infiltrated the show.”
“The gang?” His brows rose in surprise. “Why would they …”
He trailed off, processing the information. His gaze slipped to a faraway spot beyond her shoulder as he thought it through to the end. He quickly came to a conclusion, and his eyes snapped back to hers. “It’s Sloane.”
Wren nodded. “They had an insider with her. Hazen thinks they orchestrated her death, knowing it would force VidaCorp and the show to replace her. It’s a game to see who can use Sloane to deal the biggest blow first.”
“And this game,” Roman said, too calmly, “has you right in the middle of it? Hazen forced you right into the middle of it.”
“They promised I’d get enough Pacem to cure my cancer if I replaced Sloane and helped them find the Whitebird insider.”