I’m still fighting to pull in air. Then I realize Jacob has my drawing pad in his hands.
He’s looking between it and Kamali. “Bring her here.”
His thugs haul her over—she’s down to her tanktop and shorts as well, looking vulnerable for all her dancer strength. Jacob has to know the drawing is her; there’s no mistaking her face or long, graceful limbs.
“You dance.” Jacob’s eyes narrow and rake over her body in a way that forces me up on my knees in protest. It’s an indictment; I know it is. I’ve heard the stories.
I’m finally able to pull in some air. “That’s just…” I’m wheezing so badly, it’s hard to get words out. “Just my imagination.”
“Shut up.” He tosses the words to me, but another of his thugs follows it up with a fist to my face.
I’m down in the dirt again, fighting to see straight, much less think a way out of this.
“We have a cure for dancers.” Jacob is hissing in her face, and I want to get up, but a wash of dizziness keeps me on the ground. Kamali lets out a whimper. My fists curl into the dirt. “The council and the devil’s tech will keep you from raising up impure desires with this seduction.” He spits out the word, then throws the pad down and grinds his boot on top of it, ripping the pages.
Oh please no. My stomach heaves. They’re going to take her legs. I can’t even picture it—my mind refuses to go there. Think, Eli, think. Before I can come up a way to stop this, I’m hauled off the ground by two men.
Suddenly, the ground and every face around me is lit up with a light so bright, it’s like the sun has come to hover just above us. Everyone shades their eyes and looks up. I can’t see anything, but something is blasting the entire camp with a white-hot light that’s burning my retinas.
A mechanical crunching shakes the ground. Men scream. Shots fire. The two men holding me let go. I still can’t see much in the glare—just fast-moving shadows, too fast to be human, darting around the group—but I don’t hesitate, just stumble forward, searching for Kamali. Somehow I find her, grab her hand, and haul her away from the melee that’s broken out.
We don’t get far before we’re out of the blinding spotlight.
“Eli.” The sound of my name, coming from above, pulls me to a stop. A platform floats over the scrum, but there’s not enough light above it and too much glare below it—I can’t see who’s there. On the ground, two sentries are cutting down the cult members like they’re nothing but dolls. I watch, frozen, as the last of them are sliced through and crumple in pieces to the ground. I squint at whoever is presiding over the massacre, arriving in a torrent of light to smite everyone.
“Eli, Eli.” The voice lets out an audible sigh. “You continue to cause trouble wherever you go.”
I know that voice.
The platform casts a soft light up onto his ascender body.
Marcus.
Marcus slowly descends on the pillar of light below his floating ascender-tech platform. As the glare dims, I can see his sentries standing dormant over the bodies of the Cleansed cult members. Or rather, the pieces of bodies: detached limbs, torsos punched through with holes, severed heads. The blood is thick on the ground.
Kamali presses the back of her hand to her mouth.
“You killed them all.” I’m still dizzy from the drugs and the beating, but I’m not just talking about the cult members—I think this is exactly what Marcus has done to the entire Resistance camp in his effort to track me down. The world spins a little more, and I tug Kamali’s hand, pulling her behind me and putting myself between her and the last ascender I ever wanted to see again.
Marcus arrives at ground level and steps off the platform. He doesn’t even look at the pieces of bodies strewn behind him. “They were animals.” His ascender skin flushes with a dark swirl of anger. “Animals who almost deprived me of the pleasure of your company once again, Eli.”
The last thing Marcus wants is my company. “They were still people.” The cult would have killed both me and Kamali—or at least maimed and tortured us—but the people in the Resistance camp, the people I loved, didn’t deserve to be cut to pieces.
Marcus holds his hands out, palm up. “What alternative did I have?” he asks, nonchalantly, like his decision to mow them down was like deciding which barely-there outfit to wear. His toga-styled dress clings all over, hanging off one shoulder and displaying his bodyform’s muscular build. “You continue to make things difficult, Eli. I’m not the one who chose to hide out among a band of religious zealots.”
“We didn’t have much choice in the matter.” I’m desperately trying to figure a way out of this and coming up completely empty.
Marcus slowly saunters toward us. “Then it would appear I’ve found you none too soon. Just in time to prevent whatever depraved acts these zealots were about to commit. Against you and your friend.” He flicks an all-too-interested look at Kamali behind me.
Her hand grips harder on mine. We’re both shivering in the cool night air with just our shorts and tanktops. No weapons and no options. Not against an ascender with sentries.
“Leave her out of this. I’m the one you want, Marcus.” At least that was true the last time he had me trapped. Back in his apartment in the clouds, he was trying to ascend me to prove I wasn’t the “answer” to Lenora’s Question. You’re not a bridge to anywhere, he said. And I believed him. Then. Now… now Marcus has to know there’s more to the fugue than just Olympic-level painting skills.
His hungry smile twists my stomach. “Turns out, there’s something special about you after all, isn’t there?”
“Yes.” The word is out before I can stop it.
Marcus’s face transforms with amusement, but his eyes are deadly-serious.
My heart pounds as I realize I’m talking too freely, still operating under the truth drugs… which is very, very bad with Marcus around. I need to buy some time until the drugs wear off—and find a way to get Kamali free.
Marcus peers around me at her. “Given how important our young gold medalist appears to be to you, I believe my plans just expanded to include her.”
I swallow… but I can work with that. If Marcus thinks she’s important to me—which she is, regardless—then whatever he wants from me, he’ll have to keep her alive to get it. I have a sick feeling that may be the only leverage I have to protect her. Something I’ve already failed to do for the people in the camp. The sick feeling threatens to crawl up my throat.
“Fine, let’s go,” I say. “It’s getting cold, and I don’t need to see your sentries tear apart any more bodies.”
Marcus smirks and holds out a hand to his platform. It’s some kind of lift. I finally look up—a transport hovers over the compound, blocking out the night sky. Kamali’s hand clenches mine as we march to the lift. There’s barely enough room for the three of us, so I take her in my arms and hold her close. Our faces nearly touch, and we’re still basically in our underwear. In any other circumstance, in this position, I’d be working up the nerve to kiss her. As it is, I’m hoping it reinforces Marcus’s idea that we’re a couple. Kamali’s wide eyes are roaming my face, but she doesn’t pull away. My look of apology is all I have to give. I hope she understands. With the set of her mouth and her arms around my waist, I think she does—but I can tell she has a thousand things she would say if Marcus weren’t less than a foot away.
The lift rises up through a portal in the bottom of the ship, and the two sentries fly up behind us. Once the portal closes, the misty ascender flooring flows back over it. Inside the transport, the air is warmer, but still ascender-cool. The ship appears to be the one Marcus used to whisk me away to his apartment in LA. The sentries glide their mechanized hulk to the cockpit, where I guess they double as pilots. Maglev seats emerge from the wall, and Marcus gestures for us to sit. Another seat morphs from the wall-sized display screen and zips over to Marcus. I remember the seats and screen are controlled by ascender transmissions, but Kamali’s eyes are wide as she takes in the lux
uries of Marcus’s ship.
There’s a subtle shift as we start to move.
“Where are you taking us?” I ask, figuring it’s better for me to be asking the questions while the truth drugs are still in effect… although I can already feel my mind clearing a little. Maybe it’s the depth of the trouble we’re in or the way my heart’s pounding blood through my system at three times the normal rate.
Marcus’s seat glides to the screen, stirring up mist along the way. “I have a small place in New Portland,” he says with a smirk. “I think it will be suitable for our task.” The city’s strange skyline of contorted shapes shows up with crystal clarity on the screen. It must be a holo because it’s dark outside now, but the image shows full daylight.
I don’t want to discuss whatever task he has for me… not yet. “How did you find us?” I ask instead.
He arches one eyebrow. “Given your little hacked-in speech on Orion, I was fairly certain your Resistance friends had truly gotten hold of you. When you were not, in fact, among the populace of the camp, I realized you must have engineered some kind of escape.”
His casual mention of the camp—of everyone he’s killed looking for me—leaves me speechless.
Marcus narrows his eyes. “Perhaps you had some forewarning that the attack was coming?”
“I saw something.” The words are out before I can stop them. My vision. It wasn’t a forewarning of the destruction of the camp… was it? Death is coming, Kamali had told me in the fugue. It was a warning, and I ignored it. Ran from it. I squirm in my maglev seat, and the body-contouring cushion shifts with me. I sneak a side look at Kamali, and her wide-eyed horror condemns me without a trial.
“I didn’t know,” I say to her, the truth tripping easily from my tongue.
Her frown shows her confusion, but she keeps quiet—and doesn’t betray my impaired state. I hope that means she believes me.
“Interesting.” The satisfaction in Marcus’s voice pulls anger out of me and sharpens my mind for the questions I really should be asking.
“Why did you destroy the camp?” I ask, glaring my hatred at him. “If all you wanted was me, why not just come and take me?” I’m certain Marcus could have found a way around the wholesale slaughter if he wanted. Then again, given he just sliced the zealots to pieces, maybe he simply didn’t care.
“I certainly would have taken a different approach,” he says, as if this is an intellectual exercise, not the bloody deaths of people I love. “But I wasn’t the one who ordered the attack.”
I frown. “You weren’t.” I don’t believe him, but I’m not sure why he would lie about it.
Marcus shrugs, and the amusement is back on his face. “I’m good, Eli, but all the luck seems to be going to the other side lately. Including their ability to ferret out your little Resistance hideout before me.”
It’s almost like he’s telling the truth… which I don’t understand, because if it wasn’t Marcus who attacked the camp, then who was it? I share a look with Kamali and see the same hope reflected there.
I lurch up to my feet and stride fast over to Marcus. “Who is this other side? And what did they do to the camp?”
The amusement drops off Marcus’s face. He gestures to the wall screen behind him. It’s showing a nighttime view of New Portland now, but then the scene shifts.
It’s Cyrus.
My mouth drops open. He’s alive. But he’s in an ascender-tech chair, the kind where the cushion holds you prisoner. And he’s moaning. His head whips back and forth, eyes closed.
“What are you doing to him?” I demand, every muscle in my body rigid. Kamali’s hand lands on my arm, a small comfort as she looks on with horror as well.
Marcus watches us both but says nothing.
The screen shifts again. This time, it’s Delphina in the chair. She’s cursing in French and full-body flailing against the hold of the cushion. Kamali sucks in a breath. I force my curled-up fist to relax so I can put my arm around her shoulder. She presses her fist to her mouth, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Stop it,” I say to Marcus.
The image disappears, replaced by our approach to a lit-up ascender tower in the middle of New Portland.
“You should be grateful I’m the one who found you first,” Marcus says, coolly. “That could be you and Ms. LeClair under interrogation.”
“But why are they being interrogated?” I ask, my stomach clenched. I drop my hand from Kamali’s shoulder because my need to curl up my fists again is overwhelming.
“Now that is an excellent question.” Marcus peers at me like he thinks I know the answer, and I’m just not telling. Which only reminds me how insane most ascenders are.
“What’s happening to them?” I try to keep my voice cool, measured.
“I imagine they’re suffering the kind of thorough mental pain that comes when every small memory you possess is resurrected, scoured, and searched for relevant knowledge.”
“Knowledge about me,” I guess, a familiar black ooze settling into my chest.
“No doubt.”
I can’t even look at Kamali. But I feel the heat of her stare on my face. “Will they be permanently harmed?” My throat is thick, like the ooze is creeping up to choke me. Whoever Marcus’s ascender enemies are, they clearly are after the same thing he is.
“Hard to say.” He seems unconcerned about their fate.
I glare at him. “How do I make this other side stop torturing them?”
His ascender eyes dilate in that mechanical way they do sometimes, and his gaze locks with mine. “My spies have been monitoring the situation, and I have the resources necessary to stop the suffering of your friends. I simply have no reason to do so at the moment. But give me what I want, Eli, and I’ll arrange to free them all.”
The screen shows us landing at one of New Portland’s razor-thin towers… then it shifts to a scene of my mother in the chair. My whole body convulses, and I drop my gaze to the floor. I can still hear her moans.
“Shut it off,” I say, my voice shaking.
It goes silent.
“It would be a shame for your mother to be cured of her illness only to suffer a mental break at the hands of ascenders intent upon finding her son.”
I slowly raise my head and stare into his murderous ascender eyes. “I don’t know which of you I hate more.”
Marcus chuckles. Black wisps curl across his skin. “It’s not your love that I require, Eli. Merely your cooperation.”
I swallow. Kamali already knows I’m at the epicenter of all this. To blame for all of it. But I don’t have any more time to waste in getting to the point with Marcus.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask.
“You have an ability,” he says carefully. “Something I didn’t think possible. I’m not completely convinced it is possible. But if you have it, Eli, I am quite certain I want to know in complete detail how it works. And what, shall we say, useful purpose we might find for it.”
The fugue. He’s put the pieces together, and now he wants me to perform like a monkey on a stage, showing him how it works. To give him access to something I barely understand myself, but that feels like a powder keg of potential. And danger. Something inside me cries out, objecting to the idea of telling Marcus anything he hasn’t already guessed or observed for himself. I should say no. But the truth drugs are still swimming in my system, and I can’t lie, even to myself: I’m going to hand it over to him, and I’m going to do it as quickly as possible.
Because I can’t stand to see my mom in that chair.
The ship jostles slightly. We’ve arrived.
I grit my teeth and force the words out. “Then let’s get started right away.”
A smile breaks across Marcus’s face.
The torture images play on an endless loop in my head.
I’m dead center in some kind of ascender power struggle. They want secrets I don’t even understand myself. And I’m about to give them all to Marcus.
We
arrive at his apartment in New Portland. It’s ascender-cool, and Kamali and I are still shivering in our tanktops and shorts. Marcus disappears with ascender speed, then returns a moment later with two togas, one for each of us. They’re feather-light and remind me of our Olympic uniforms, only this ascender-tech fabric is even more weightless—like putting on a wash of warm air—and it clings everywhere. Kamali’s dancer form jumps into high relief—the toga is more revealing than her loose shirt and shorts. I almost ask for different clothes, but it doesn’t seem to bother her, and the warmth is immediate, calming my chilled flesh.
“Are you ready?” Marcus asks me.
I don’t want Kamali to see this, so I gesture to the couch in the vast receiving room of his apartment. “Maybe you should stay here.”
“Maybe I should go with you.” She gives me a piercing look.
I grimace. “I’m not sure you want to see this.” Truth is, I don’t want her to see it, but maybe she’ll get the message.
She glares at Marcus. “I don’t trust him.”
I take her by the shoulders and look her straight in the eyes. “It’ll be easier for me if you’re not watching.” I’m not just being squeamish—I’m also trying to buy her time alone to figure a way out. I can’t say anything about that, but I hope my insistence will speak for itself.
“I have a room for Ms. LeClair.” Marcus tips his head to me. “She’ll be safe while we’re working.”
The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2) (Singularity Series) Page 13