“Are you coming with us?” he asks, his eyes finally meeting mine.
I can feel Violet watching me too. Still hoping I’ll say no, I think. That maybe I’ll decide to run away with her after all.
If only I had the time and the words to explain to her why I can’t.
But when Jaxon turns and heads for the car, I hesitate only for a moment before following—just long enough to ask Violet one last time to come with us. She refuses. And with every shake of her head, with every second of her silent stare, I imagine the ground between us opening a little wider, until it’s a chasm that I’m not sure either of us will ever be able to cross again.
I catch up with Jaxon, and in an attempt to take my mind off of where Violet is going to go from here, I say, “I thought you’d left. When I came back, when I didn’t see you—”
“I tried to leave,” he says, his gaze directed straight ahead. “I couldn’t. Not without knowing what would happen to you.” He glances over at me. “It’s pathetic, I know.”
I slow almost to a stop, the words bouncing around in my brain. I’m not sure what to say. How to fully accept that even now, he really did refuse to leave me behind. He must have been worried when he couldn’t reach his mother. But despite that, despite every hateful word I said to him, he was still here when I got back. And that’s . . .
Well, it’s not pathetic.
We reach the car—which is now back to full opacity and to that pearly blue color I love—and he opens the door for me without a word. I wipe my shoes off in the wet grass as best I can and climb into the backseat, thankful to finally be out of the driving rain. Seth doesn’t look up from the comcenter or acknowledge me in any way. I hold in a sigh and wipe off the foggy rear window so I can look back toward where Violet stood, watching me walk away. I can’t see her now, of course. It’s much too dark. If she’s there at all, she’s blending in with the hazy gray rain and the black backdrop of sky.
My fingers reach for the door handle. It’s an automatic reaction, and I have to fight to keep myself from flinging that door open and rushing back to find my sister. I can’t keep doing that. I’ve spent too much time stumbling around in the dark, trying to find her, and I’ve lost sight of so much else because of it.
“What’s taking it so long?” Jaxon asks.
“It’s searching for satellites,” Seth replies. “And the rain’s not helping. Just give it a second.”
In the rearview mirror I can see Jaxon, and how his face has grown paler still; I wish there was something I could say to bring the life back to his eyes, and the color back to his cheeks. I wish I could make the message go through. I wish I could somehow guarantee that his mother would answer from the other side and tell us everything is fine. That she’s fine, and this is all some misunderstanding, and nobody is fighting about anything and it’s all going to be okay.
But all I can do is stare at the LCD screen blinking CONNECTING over and over in a bright green font, and shiver in my soaking-wet clothes, and hope, and hope. . . .
“Here.” Jaxon’s voice makes me jump from my practically catatonic state. A canvas jacket lands in my lap a second later. “Your lips are turning blue,” he says, looking at me in the mirror. His tone isn’t quite as harsh as before. Progress, at least.
“What about me?” Seth asks.
“What about you?”
“She holds a gun to you, and she still gets the jacket?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s messed up.” Seth twists around in his seat so he can see me, and mouths, Whipped. And I’m about to smile, just because I’m glad that Seth isn’t ignoring me anymore, but then the comcenter beeps.
All three of our heads jerk toward the screen.
We have a connection. The contact list loads along the right side, and after a few frantic seconds of searching, I find their mother’s name. Third from the top, grayed out with a little offline icon beside it.
“She’s never offline,” Seth says. “She’s always working.” His voice is barely audible over the rain that falls like pounding hammers against the roof of the car.
We’re all silent for a minute, holding in a collective breath, suspended in a moment that feels poised on the edge of chaos.
And then Jaxon turns the key. The car roars to life, and the tires squeal as we turn back toward the city.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Last Chance
The sun breaks the horizon in a hundred different places—reflected in a hundred different buildings—just as we reach the city limits. I’ve had so little sleep that I’m beyond the point of tired. My eyes are burning, bloodshot, and as we drive, the edges of Haven blur and run together into a spinning canvas of silvers and blues.
Even though I’m half-asleep, I still can’t help but notice how strangely empty the city is. It’s close to seven a.m. The streets should be packed with people going to work, but we have the road almost entirely to ourselves, and I count only a few dozen people on the sidewalks. They all seem blissfully unaware of the desolation around them—one of them even looks like he’s whistling to himself, which for some reason sends a shiver up my spine. Most of the stores and restaurants still have their lights off, and several of them have the metal security walls pulled over the doors and windows. Everybody has those walls; after all, the people who built Haven are the ones who lived through the war. Even so, this is the higher-end district of the city—the safest district—and people in this part of town almost never use them.
Something is definitely wrong.
My house is only a few miles from here. Do my parents have our security system engaged too? Are they safe? I almost ask Jaxon to turn down the next road, which would take me to them, but I know that finding out what’s going on at the CCA headquarters is more critical right now.
Still, when we pass the street, I find myself gripping the armrest for strength and breathing deeply through my nose, commanding myself not to panic. I sink back against the seat, and though I’m trying not to think about her, Violet’s words are the first thing that drop into my head.
It’s too late. . . . It’s already begun.
We can’t turn back now, though. Because suddenly we’re in that same abandoned parking deck that Jaxon brought me to just days ago, and he opens the door for me just like he did then. Except this time he won’t look at me.
Everything is so different now. We’re so much more complicated. And out of everything else that’s weighing on my nerves, out of all the anxiety and worry, the way he averts his eyes is somehow worse than anything else.
Because suddenly I realize: Standing here, I still feel the same as I did before. After everything we’ve been through, I want to trust him even more than I did the very first time we stood here together. I can’t stand the thought of him still being angry with me. Especially not now—not when I don’t know what we’re about to face, or if I’ll have another chance to apologize and set things right between us. Maybe there’s no time for that sort of thing now. But when you’re faced with the possibility of the end, it’s hard not to think about all the things you should have started.
Seth is busy digging through the trunk, pulling out weapons left and right. Jaxon is taking more time than necessary to mess with the opacity adjuster—I’m guessing because it gives him something to look at instead of me.
This may be my last chance.
That’s the last thing I think before I walk over, grab Jaxon’s arm, and pull him to the corner of the garage.
“Cate, what are—”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about what happened earlier. About everything I said.” The words tumble breathlessly from my mouth.
“Okay. It’s fine. Let’s just—” He tries to maneuver his way back around me, but I stop him.
“It’s not okay.”
He sighs. “We really don’t have time for this.”
“No—I mean, I know we don’t have much time, but that’s just it, isn’t it? We don’t have time, so I . . . I have to tell
you that I’m sorry.”
“You already did. I heard you the first time.”
“Not just about earlier. About everything.”
He stops trying to fight his way around me.
I take a deep breath. There are so many things I’ve thought about saying in this moment—lines that I’ve rehearsed, words that I thought would be so perfect if only I could find the courage to say them. But the words that come out of my mouth are not what I planned; for better or worse, they belong to this moment and this moment alone.
“I’m sorry for not trusting you,” I say. “I’m sorry for all of the times I looked away when you tried to catch my eye in the cafeteria, and for pretending not to notice you when you came into the auditorium. Because I knew you were there.” I take another deep breath. “And I guess you’ve always been there, but I’ve always been too scared to admit that to myself, but now . . . I mean, after everything we’ve been through it just seems really, really stupid to be afraid of telling you all this, and so I think you should know that walking away from you earlier was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I couldn’t do it again if I tried.”
By the time I finish, his eyes are locked with mine, watching me like we’re the only two people left in the world. I exhale. Slowly.
“So . . . yeah. There’s that. And now I’m really wishing you would say something,” I whisper. I need to hear him say he feels the same. I want him to tell me how hard it was to watch me walk away, or how he plans on always being there for me, just like he always has been. Something. Anything.
But he doesn’t say a word.
“Okay,” I breathe. “So you’re not going to say any—”
He stops me with a kiss. At first it’s slow—almost shy—but then he takes my face in his hands and crushes me to him, and for one beautiful moment I forget everything except for the taste of him, and the feel of his fingers pushing back into my hair, pulling me eagerly, almost greedily, into his kiss. I forget that there are people out to kill both of us. I forget about the dead city all around us. I forget about how caught up we are in the lies this world has told us, and in this war that’s building and threatening to cave in on us. Right now, the only thing I’m caught up in is him. Again and again I’m caught up in him—in his amazing scent, in the warmth of his skin against mine, over and over until we’re so close, so tangled up in each other, that it’s hard to tell where he ends and I begin. And when he finally pulls his lips away from mine, we stay like that, his arms wrapped tightly around me, his heart pounding against mine.
We don’t have time to catch our breath before the trunk of the car slams shut. I turn my head in time to see it fading out of sight, adjusting to the opacity level of the rest of the car. Seth is walking toward us.
“Good thing we don’t have anything important to be doing right now,” he says, raising an eyebrow.
I feel myself blushing. Jaxon kisses my forehead—lets his lips linger there for just a few seconds—before stepping away.
Seth clears his throat. “And I’m not only complaining because you two just took my role as third wheel to a whole new level of awkward,” he adds. “We’re just on a bit of a tight schedule here.”
He hands me a weapon I’ve never seen before—a sleek black thing that resembles a tiny crossbow. I force my attention to it, away from the lingering taste of Jaxon’s kiss. Overall, the gun’s incredibly light, but in its center is a weight that helps steady it when I practice aiming it at a pillar on the far side of the garage.
“Cybow,” he says. “It’s a well-balanced gun, and you should be able to shoot it with just one hand.” His eyes fall to the swollen wrist at my side; we ripped up a box that was in the car’s trunk and used it and some of the medical tape and gauze Jaxon took from the clinic to make a sort of splint for it. “That’s your dominant hand, isn’t it?” he asks.
“Unfortunately.”
“Yeah, so you’re definitely sticking with the Cybow. It’s easy as crap to aim, even with your lame hand. It is, however, one of my favorite guns, so don’t you dare lose it.”
“Hopefully you won’t have to use it, anyway,” Jaxon says, grabbing his own weapon and starting toward the elevator.
“Always the optimist,” Seth says. But Jaxon’s moving so quickly that he’s already too far away to hear. We jog to catch up with him, and then the three of us keep up that pace, moving as fast as we can while still keeping an eye on our surroundings. Not that there’s any need; the garage is just as empty as it was the first day I came here.
Even so, by the time we start our descent in the elevator, the back of my neck is damp with nervous sweat. Anxiety is like a fourth passenger in the cramped space, walking between us, wrapping her arms around us so tightly, it’s difficult to breathe.
The elevator lurches to a stop, and Jaxon steps in front of me. “Stay close to me,” he says, and we brace ourselves as the doors slide open.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Aftermath
Inside, the room stretches emptily before us—quiet and strange with no chatter, no bustle of people or clicking and beeping of computers like last time. The only noise disrupting the deathlike stillness is the sound of our own uncertain footsteps, and the occasional flicker of the fluorescent lights above. And even though I know we’re all thinking it, no one asks the obvious, terrifying question: Where did everybody go?
We draw our weapons and head for the president’s office.
It’s empty. Just like everywhere else. The chair at her desk is overturned, and on the floor there’s a broken picture of her and Jaxon, alongside a man I can only assume is Jaxon’s father; but other than that, the room looks undisturbed. I linger in the doorway while Jaxon picks up the picture, and Seth searches the room a little closer, checking recent messages on the president’s computer and comcenter. A series of screens on the far wall catches my eye, and I move to Jaxon’s side, motioning toward them.
“Part of a security system?” I ask.
He nods.
“Maybe we can find out what happened,” I say, joining Seth at the computer. My fingers have already started flying across the screen, trying to navigate around the security control program, before I notice that Jaxon is still watching me silently. And I think I know why.
Because if I manage to pull up the footage of the last twenty-four hours, who knows what it’s going to show.
What will he have to watch happen to his mother?
I take a step away from the computer. “Or maybe we should just go. Obviously it’s not—”
“No,” Jaxon interrupts. His eyes are on the computer, not me, and they have a strange, glassy look about them. “No, it’s a good idea. We should find out what we can.”
He takes my place at the door, keeping an eye out, and I reluctantly go back to work.
The system is more than a little intricate. There are over twenty-five cameras being operated by this computer, and it takes a solid minute or two for me to just work out which files represent which rooms. And even after I manage that, trying to gain access to any of their past surveillance feeds just earns me an administrator password prompt that I can’t get past.
I’m starting to get frustrated, when I find a group of camera folders labeled “low profile”; they don’t require administrator access, only program passwords—which are easy enough to bypass. A few more clicks and setting adjustments later, three of the monitors on the wall blur to life.
“I couldn’t gain access to this room’s cameras,” I explain. “I’m not sure where this one is, but it looks like this it’s a live stream, so hang on, let me adjust the date and time and see if I can—”
“Wait a second,” Seth says, “check out the bottom-left screen.”
Jaxon leaves his place by the door, and together we tread softly to the tiny display and crouch down in front of it. The scene playing out on it isn’t as clear as I’d expected—but it’s clear enough to see what Seth’s talking about.
There are no fewer than a h
alf-dozen people on the screen in front of us. And I recognize every single one of them from school. Lacey Cartwright is front and center, her smile tight and menacing as she points to something offscreen. They’re in what looks like some sort of storage room, surrounded by steel racks stacked high with computer equipment and crates of old discs. Most of them are sifting through the crates, but it’s hard to tell if they’re looking for something, or just trying to make as big of a mess as possible.
Suddenly, almost as if Lacey can feel us watching her, she turns and looks directly up at the camera. Her smile widens. I stumble away from the screen, trying to catch my breath; but it feels like the air’s been punched straight from my lungs.
“They’re CCA, right?” I ask, glancing back at Jaxon. “Please tell me all of them are CCA, and that’s why they’re here.”
He shakes his head, and I look back at the screen just as a petite brown-haired girl—a sophomore whose name is Brittany, I think—grips the edge of one of the steel racks and lifts it, single-handedly, into the air. Her strength is obviously inhuman, but it’s nothing compared with how quickly she moves, how her entire body blurs with speed and grace as she flings the rack aside. An instant later we hear the crash—not over the video feed, but reverberating down the hall outside.
My gaze snaps toward the door.
How close is that room, exactly?
There’s another crash, followed by shouting and loud peals of laughter. When everything grows quiet again, it’s Seth who finally moves; he goes straight to the door without a word, then shuts and secures it. It slides closed with a painfully loud metallic thump that echoes around the room. I want to think that it only seems so loud, that it only makes me jump because of the panic settling over us.
But when I finally feel brave enough to look back at the screen, most of the people—the clones—are gone.
Seth turns off the lights and slowly makes his way back to us, his face illuminated by the soft glow of the monitors. No one interrupts the silence; we’re all too busy listening, and probably wondering the same things: Did they hear the door shut? Do they know we’re in here? And where did they go now?
Falls the Shadow Page 21