by Azalea Ellis
—Bunny—
“You said it. You said it because you know the answer in your heart. You’ve judged yourself, Bunny. And I think—I think you’ve been found lacking.”
WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO, EVE? I CAN’T JUST STOP BEING A MODERATOR. IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT. I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE TRIALS, I CAN’T STOP THEM AND I CAN’T HELP YOU THROUGH THEM. THE MOST I CAN DO IS GIVE YOU QUESTS IN BETWEEN SO YOU CAN GET MORE SEEDS AND PROTECT YOURSELF.
—Bunny—
“You’re lying again, Bunny.” My voice was soft, but the words were hard, and as forceful as I could make them. “I and my team are going to escape NIX and its Game. You can lie to me, but not to yourself. And that’s why you’re not going to try and stop us. If you won’t help, the least you can do is keep silent, and not get us caught and killed. Because then you will have killed someone, no escaping or denying it. And trust me, you don’t want to know what it feels like.”
I stood and moved stiffly out of the bathroom and to our resident scientist. “So what did you get?”
Blaine looked up from the screen in front of him. “How they are doing it is a bit of a mystery. Well, that is obvious. They are teleporting you like some science fiction film! They must know exactly where you are. The sensors picked up the anomaly instantaneously. But the algorithms that know how to keep you clothed, now those must be interesting…”
I’d lifted my hand to my neck. “They must use the GPS to teleport us. So when we short them out, they’ll lose connection, right?”
“I would imagine so. Unless they have some other way of tracking your exact location, I do not see how they could possibly continue to do…whatever it is they are doing.
Chapter 21
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.
— John Milton
I jerked from a nightmare into the afternoon sun knifing my bleary eyes. The light through my window cleansed my memory of the dream I’d been having like bleach. Except the dark stains of the nightmare remained, in the way I felt sick to my stomach, and my sheets, damp from sweat. A shiver swept through me, and every inch of my body ached. Every injury seemed to have bloomed into maturity during the night. I grabbed loose clothes that would cover as much skin as possible and snuck into the bathroom without being noticed.
After a long, hot shower, I looked at myself in the mirror. "God. That's going to be hard to hide." I could have easily passed for someone who'd just been in a pod accident. "Or fallen out of a plane with no parachute," I muttered to myself. Sam had healed the serious injury—my shoulder—and no more than that. I debated for a moment whether or not to put one of the Seeds I'd earned into Resilience. I had gained a record six Seeds from the Trial.
Instead, I snuck into my mother's room while she messed around in the kitchen making breakfast for the family, and took her makeup. I didn't know what I was doing, but we had similar pale coloring, and thirty minutes later I'd managed to cover up most of the bruising on my face. More liquid skin camo bandages over the cuts and scrapes, some powder to make them blend in, and I was ready. My face wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, but if I hung my now-dry hair over it and didn't interact with Zed or my mother too much, I might be able to slip by.
I passed by my brother on the way around the table, trying not to walk too stiffly.
My mom bustled around the kitchen, cooking with the commanding concentration of a conductor at a symphony.
"Whoa, Eve," Zed said.
I gritted my teeth as I wondered what had given me away.
"Did you get taller than me again?" He tilted his head and looked me up and down with a frown.
As children, we'd traded places for the title of “tallest” for years. It had been a bit of friendly sibling rivalry when we were younger, and in recent years, a title I gladly conceded to him. I had a model's height, if not one's thinness, but any taller and it would start to stand out as strange. My mother said our father had been huge, head and shoulders above other men. That was all well and good for Zed, but as a girl, I didn't want to be head and shoulders above other men. But, better that question than the one I'd been expecting. "No, I'm the same size. It's just that you're sitting down."
He considered for a moment, and then shook his head. "No, I don't think so. Here, let's go check." He stood and grabbed my arm to pull me to the wall where my mom had hung the piece of wood she'd measured us against. We'd moved house to house often in my younger years, so instead of a wall, she'd measured us against a flat panel of wood that moved along with us. At least one childhood memory wasn't left behind.
Though I managed not to jerk away from his painful grip on my left arm, which had suffered more than its share of abuse from the Oracle, I couldn't stop my wince of pain in time to avoid notice.
"What's wrong?" He said.
I looked slightly down at him and shook my head. "Oh, it's just a bruise." I smiled convincingly, I hoped. "No big deal. But I guess you were right. I've grown. Again." I nodded toward my old height mark, now at my eye level.
He frowned. "I've got some salve for bruises, if it's bad." Before I could react, he'd leaned over and lifted the end of the baggy sleeve of my shirt, exposing the bruise.
He paused, and then raised the sleeve higher, and higher still when the discoloration didn't end. He stood silent, staring at my completely exposed arm and shoulder.
I knew what he was seeing. It was a mottled mess of blue and purple from the top of my shoulder down, fading out to a strange yellow green around my elbow.
It looked like I'd been attacked by a semi.
His voice was low and forcefully controlled. "Just a bruise?" His brown eyes met my own silver-blue ones with scorn. "How did this happen?" His voice was louder now, and my mother looked over, gasping when she saw my arm.
She walked around the table and brushed her fingers lightly over the colorful area.
I was careful not to react to the pain even her gentle touch caused me. "What happened, Sweetie? I should call the doctor." She paused for a second with her hair shielding her lowered face, and then her voice came out, low. "Did someone hurt you?"
Zed latched onto that idea, his eyes narrowing. "Did someone hit you?"
I drew back from them both, pushing my sleeve down over my arm again and frowning. "God, no! What's with you two, jumping to crazy conclusions, going all over-protective on me?" I shook my head and gave a half smile. "I was riding my friend Adam's bike. He let me borrow it. He told me to be careful, but this bunny ran across the road, and I swerved, and I fell off. I'm completely fine, it just bruised really bad. That's all. It doesn't even hurt very much."
My mother backed off a bit, but her frown was still skeptical. "Are you sure?"
I rolled my eyes. "Of course I'm sure. It happened to me, didn't it? How would I not know for sure?"
She turned back to the kitchen at that. "Well, serves you right, you silly girl. There's a reason they require a license to drive a bike. One for a pod is not the same thing."
"I know, Mom. I was being stupid. No more joyrides for me, okay?"
She nodded and sat a plate on the table. "Damn straight."
I turned and sat, then started to load my plate with food. I was so hungry it felt like my stomach might turn inside out with the sucking need for sustenance. I ate till my stomach was so full I couldn't keep another bite down without throwing up, despite the censoring looks of my mother.
When I left the table to go back to sleep, Zed was still staring at me in silent, pointed anger. He didn't believe my little story about the bike, and he was making it obvious.
I ignored him, too tired to deal with it. I couldn't tell him the truth, so the only way to alleviate his suspicions was to continue steadfast in my secrecy and lies. At least if he thought I was being bullied or abused by my "friends," he wouldn't be on to the real secret.
To my surprise, he came to my room a few minutes later with a small jar in hand. “For the bruise,” he said simply.
“Uh, thanks
,” I mumbled, reaching for the jar.
He shook his head. “Roll up your sleeve. I’ll do it.”
“That’s okay, really. I can do—”
He sighed exasperatedly. “You know I’m better at stuff like this than you. Just let me help.”
I grumbled, but did as he asked, rolling up my sleeve all the way to my neck.
He sat on the edge of my bed and stared silently at my arm and shoulder again, his lips pressed together in a white line. But he didn’t say anything, just dipped his forefinger in the jar and applied the salve gently to my skin, rubbing it in slowly with butterfly-light touches.
Almost immediately, I felt a decrease in pain of the areas he’d covered. I let out a sigh of relief. “You’ve got those magic hands. I’m sure all your future patients will love you.” I still remembered my faint jealousy as a child toward Zed, who apparently was born with normal hands and feet, which my mother cooed over to no end. I’d, somewhat snidely, started calling his hands “magic,” and it seemed to be true. Everything Zed touched flourished. My father had six fingers and toes, like me, but his parents hadn’t chosen to have the extras amputated as a baby like mine were. I’d questioned my mom about my father a lot when I was younger, but she didn’t like to be forced to remember him, and I learned to stop asking.
“I’m sure I developed this magic patching you up every time you got into trouble as a kid. Remember how many times you skinned your knees?”
I laughed. “I was so gangly and awkward! And you, my little brother, getting out the med kit every time and taking care of me.”
“Someone had to,” he grinned. “Or all those sidewalks and gym floors would have beaten you up mercilessly. It was like your knees were magnetically drawn to anything that could hurt them. I see things haven’t changed too much.” He raised an eyebrow at my shoulder. As kids, we would joke that whatever inanimate object I’d gotten my latest injury from had purposefully hurt me, and scheme ways to get back at it. Zed had deliberately tracked dirt onto the gym floor for months after I’d ripped the skin off the bottom of my feet running too fast on it.
“Don’t worry, I’m much tougher now. If you think this is bad, you should see the tree I got into an ‘altercation’ with.” I winked.
“A tree?” He shook his head and sighed. “Oh, Sis, you do stupid stuff sometimes.”
“Tell me about it,” I grunted, wincing as he rubbed a particularly sensitive part of my arm.
He stayed, rubbing salve into my arm and shoulder till his jar ran out, and we chatted and laughed like we hadn’t in a while. Not since before the Game. I didn’t realize how much I missed it.
* * *
I woke again to a light flashing in my face. I shuddered from the abrupt detachment from another nightmare. I never slept without them, now. What I’d thought was a light was actually a Window, sent from Jacky using the Skill gained by joining my team. There was only one word, but it made me throw myself out of bed and grab my shoes.
--HELP--
-Jacky-
I sent a response, asking what was wrong and where she was.
--I’M IN HIS OFFICE--
-Jacky-
That wasn’t useful, and she ignored my request for clarification, so I pulled up her location on the map using my Command Skill, snuck into my sleeping mother’s room, and took the keys to her pod. I drove faster than I’d ever driven in my life, uncaring if an enforcer might see. Jacky may have been in danger from NIX. I sent another Window, asking what was wrong.
--I THINK HE’S DEAD. DEFINITELY DEAD--
--PLEASE COME--
-Jacky-
After that, I couldn’t get any more out of her, and I gunned the pod till I reached the home for “troubled” girls. It was a large, fenced in detention center. She’d mentioned it before, but it was still strange to realize Jacky lived in a place like that.
I parked the pod in a tree’s shadow and took a running jump at the barbed wire-topped fence. I held down the spiraling row of metal thorns with one hand, and crawled over. The nearest door into the building was locked. “Damn it!” I growled. I was wasting time.
I pinpointed Jacky’s location on my map, and saw that she was in a room on the fourth floor. Its glowing window was visible from down below. “Okay, let’s try this,” I mumbled. I took off my shoes and unsheathed my claws, then walked a few yards away from the building. I sprinted toward the wall as fast as I could, and took a running leap at the last second, smashing into the concrete with my claws out.
I scrabbled and dug in desperately, and finally found purchase. I hung for a second as my still-healing body screamed out in pain, and then found a seam in the concrete for my toes to grip. Then I began to scale the wall, digging in my claws and gripping with my toes as I drug myself upward, till I made it to the window on the fourth floor.
Inside, Jacky paced back and forth, biting a clenched fist. An old, overweight man lay on the hardwood floor across from her, with his skull caved in, blood puddled around it like a red halo.
I ripped the windowsill away, squinting as glass burst outward into my face, then twisted the frame to the side and scrambled through.
Jacky gasped and took an automatic step toward me, her features sagging open in relief. But just as quickly, her eyes darted back toward the corpse, and she stopped herself. “I—I killed him. It was an accident. I just…panicked.” She bit down on her knuckles again, and shook her head wordlessly.
The old man wore a button-up shirt, and socks. No pants, no underwear. His lifeless hand clenched a fistful of shiny brown hair. Jacky’s hair, ripped from her head.
Her shirt was torn, hanging half open and exposing her bra and stomach.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They’re gonna send me to jail,” she said in a low voice, letting her hands fall to her sides. “It’ll be just like before, but worse because I’m older, and I’ve got a record, and he’s the warden, and he’s dead.”
“Just like before?”
“My first foster family. Distant relatives of my dad, back here in this country. I was already beautiful, even as a kid. They had a son, older than me. They wouldn’t believe me when I told them what he was doing, and he tried to…I hurt him, and I ran away. When the cops finally picked me up on the streets, my relatives said I was violent, that I attacked their son cause I was an animal.
The second home, it was the husband. The wife was nice. I told her, hoped she would help, yeah? But she was jealous, not surprised. She hit me with the rollin’ pin she used to make biscuits. When they were asleep, I burned down the house.”
“And then you came here?” I swallowed against the lump in my throat.
She shook her head and continued on in a soft voice. “After that, it was the streets again. I found another martial arts gym, like the one my father used to take me to. I cleaned the place at night to pay for lessons. And I used the lessons to fight. For money. That’s where the enforcers found me again. I was still too young, and nobody died, so they brought me here. And it all started over again.” By the end, she was drooping with cynical fatigue. “I just murdered the warden. Nucking futts, I’m so screwed, Eve. I dunno why I even called you.”
I strode forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, pushing backward and forcing her to stand straight. “You called me because you knew I would help you. This time is different from before, because you’re not the only one standing up for yourself anymore. You’re part of my team, now.”
“But I killed him. I murdered him.”
“He tried to hurt you?”
“He tried.”
“And he hurt others?” I guessed.
She nodded.
“He deserved it. You did the right thing, Jacky. And I’m not going to let you be punished for that.”
She stared at me for a moment. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m getting you out of here. And you’re never coming back.”
“How? They’re gonna investigate, and they’re gonna fig
ure out what I did. Even if I run, they’ll find me, eventually.”
“The first step is to destroy the evidence you were even here.” They’d have Jacky’s prints, and maybe even her DNA on file. “Give me a hand. He looks heavy.”
We maneuvered his torso and head into position beneath his huge, antique liquor cabinet. I carefully removed Jacky’s hair from his fist, and handed it to her. Then we toppled his liquor cabinet onto his already damaged skull, crushing it even further, with a satisfying crunchy squelch that was almost overwhelmed by the shatter of glass.
“One last thing,” I said. “If he’s got a liquor cabinet, he’s got to have cigars.” Already, the alcohol fumes burned my sensitive nostrils.
Jacky rummaged in his desk and came back with a cigar and an old-timey zippo.
“Perfect.” I lit the cigar with some effort, stepped back, and paused as a thought came to me. “Jacky, is there anything you need in this place? We’re not coming back.”
“There’s nothing. Nothing of my own anymore.”
I flicked the cigar at the warden’s head, and the room roared into flames. “Let’s go. The fire will draw attention.” I jerked my head to the window. I jumped first, and landed in a roll, but still lost my breath and felt the pain of impact all the way up through my body.
Jacky came next, slamming to the ground and sinking down into a graceful three-point crouch with enough force to make dust rise from the ground around her. Normally she would have grinned and bragged about being a badass, but she followed me wordlessly to my mother’s pod.
“Where are you taking me?” Jacky asked.
“To our base. You’re getting a room in the main house,” I replied. I set the pod to semi-autopilot, since I was no longer in a hurry, and pulled up my Command Window to send a quick wake-up message to Adam.
--I’M AWAKE.—
-Adam-
--GOOD. I NEED YOU TO DO SOMETHING FOR ME.—
-Eve-
--WHAT IS IT?--