by Dan Krokos
Noah walks a circle around Nina slowly, less than a foot away. Fresh tears fall from his chin. “You killed me,” he whispers. “You killed me. You killed me.” I keep waiting for Nina to notice him, but she doesn’t. He’s just some kind of illusion, an expression in my mind. I guess I have to keep reminding myself of that.
“What do we do with her?” Rhys says.
“We don’t do anything,” Peter says.
I blink, and Noah disappears. This time it felt like he’d seen enough and decided to leave on his own. Not sure if that’s a good sign or not. I should tell the others he’s still here. Alive and not alive.
“Remind them about the memory shots,” Noah says in my head.
“We need our shots,” I say.
Nina watches us from just twenty feet away, hands loose at her sides. She rolls her head from shoulder to shoulder; her neck cracks. It would take no time to cover the distance, to drive my fists into her body until she begged for forgiveness. I could make her tell Noah she’s sorry, so sorry, that she knows he had so much longer to live, that he missed out on his whole life, all the good parts we had dreamed about as a team, when the fighting would be over for good.
My hands shake.
“I don’t want to fight,” she says.
“Well, of course not,” Rhys says. I touch his arm, hearing the anger in his voice. “There are three of us, one of you.”
“Why are you here?” I ask her.
Her eyes flit between us, assessing us, identifying weak points. I know, because I’m doing the same thing to her.
“Exactly what I told Commander Gane,” she replies.
“That means nothing to me.”
“Sequel,” Peter says softly as he steps up beside me. “I know you’re in there.”
Nina spits on the floor. “Please. Save it.”
Rhys steps forward, and this time I don’t touch his arm. Nina walks backward until she hits the wall, then slides down to her butt. She licks her lips. “Just stay on your side. You may be able to kill me, but not before I kill one of you.”
“She’s right,” Noah says. “Just leave her alone.”
Quiet. His voice is like a cracked whip in my mind, shattering my focus.
“You think so?” Rhys says to her.
“It’s not an option,” Peter says. “Not until we know what she’s done to Sequel.”
“Sequel is dead,” Nina replies. The skin under her left eye twitches. She grabs at the black hair growing over her ear and twists it between two fingers. Sequel used to twist her hair like that when she lied. Maybe I do it too.
“If Sequel is truly gone, then why should we let you live?” I say.
Nina smiles, drawing it out. I didn’t know my face was capable of making a smile that sinister.
“Answer her,” Rhys says. “Or I’ll come over there and tear your arms off.”
“Because,” Nina says, standing up slowly. She stretches, arching her back like a cat. “Because if you come at me, I’ll have enough time to speak the words.”
Sweat breaks out all over my body. Somehow, I know exactly what words she’s talking about. A few simple words took Sequel away and gave us this new girl.
I can’t ask her, but Peter can. “What words?”
“The words that will awaken me inside your Miranda too.”
“She’s lying,” Rhys says. His hands are fists, white-knuckled. Peter’s fingers trail down the inside of my arm until he reaches my hand. He squeezes once. My head swims, mouth bitter with fear. Everything that came before this doesn’t compare to the powerlessness I feel now.
All it takes are simple words. She’ll speak a code and my consciousness will be shoved aside and North Iteration 9-A will storm in and use my body.
Rhys is about to explode, but Peter remains calm. He steps forward without fear. This is the animal inside him, the one so confident, sometimes I think it can’t be real.
“You don’t mean that,” Peter says softly. “Say them right now. I dare you.”
My throat tightens; what is he doing? This is what he was worried about. But then I see—if I change now, they can control the situation, expecting it, but if I don’t, then Nina is lying, and we can stop worrying about it.
He’s still ten feet from Nina, but she presses her back against the wall. Part of me wants to rush in and snap her neck. Let’s see if she can say the words with my hands around her throat.
“Don’t come any closer,” she spits.
“Say the words,” Peter says. “You need all the help you can get.”
She shakes her head, glaring daggers. “No. Maybe I have orders to speak them at a particular moment. Now is not that moment.”
I want to say she’s bluffing, but it could be true. Yet speaking them now would grant her another ally in the room, wouldn’t it? I don’t know what to believe.
Noah stands against the bars to my left, staring at me. “Why would she say there’s a copy of Nina inside you? What am I missing?”
She’s lying. Please let me focus.
I feel him leave my mind. When I look to the bars again, he’s gone.
Peter is right in front of her now. He reaches out, slowly, and drops a hand on Nina’s shoulder, the way one would when conferring with a close friend. “Stay on this side of the cell, for however long we’re in here. If you don’t, I’ll kill you before anyone else can. Do you understand?”
Killing her would be easier, and safer, but that’s Peter. He’ll give anyone a fair chance.
Nina seems to consider his words. Then she shoves him away with both hands.
Peter’s arms windmill, but he regains balance after a few backward steps. Rhys charges forward and Peter shouts, “Wait!”
Rhys freezes, but it’s because I dig my fingers into his arm, holding him back with more of my strength than I care to admit. He doesn’t try to shake me off.
Peter turns around and walks back to us. “She understands.” He puts his hands on our shoulders and turns us around gently, then guides us across the cage.
“We leave her alive?” Rhys says.
We might as well flip a coin. I try to look at it from Sequel’s point of view. She didn’t ask for this. She’s as much a prisoner as we are, maybe more so.
“For now,” Peter says. “Until we’re sure Sequel can’t be recovered. Would you kill us if we were in the same situation?”
Rhys’s face falls. It’s the wrong question. He did kill his team once, long ago. He did it to keep them from being used by the creators, but it was still murder, and we all know it.
He turns away from us, just slightly, eyes on the floor. Probably remembering what he did. It’s another reminder he’s not one of us, not in the same way. I can’t even imagine how to comfort him. Don’t feel bad, Rhys. You had to kill your team! Yeah, that wouldn’t help.
Peter recovers before it’s too late. “I’m not talking about what you did, Rhys. You need to know that. You tried your best to save your friends. I’m talking about if there was still a chance to save us. Sequel might still be in there.”
Rhys’s shoulders relax, just slightly. I let out the breath I was holding. For now, we’re still a unit.
“Promise me we’ll give her a chance,” Peter says to both of us. “We owe her that.”
Noah’s voice returns. “I don’t have a say? Kill her. Before she does to you what she did to me.”
You don’t mean that. But he does. And I want to agree, because maybe I’m a coward and killing her will make me feel safe, rather than giving the girl we brought into our family a chance to return.
“Okay,” I say, thankful it isn’t my call.
Rhys sighs through his nose. “Right. Okay.” He rubs his eyes. “We should rest for whatever comes next.”
“I do mean it,” Noah says. “Kill her.”
“You don’t,” I say. Aloud.
Peter settles down against the wall. “What?”
I should tell them the truth.
Rhys sits next to him
, and they’re both watching me just stand here with my hands clasped together.
“Miranda?” Peter says.
I should tell them the truth, but I’m…embarrassed, I think. It sounds too weird.
Over my shoulder, Nina has her eyes mostly closed now, but they open every few seconds.
Noah stands near the bars, grim-faced. “Tell them. And tell them I say hi. But I can’t stay here if you guys are going to talk about me. Creeps me out.” He sees me hesitate. “Go on.”
So I crouch in front of them and put a hand on each of their knees to support myself, then whisper, “When I took Noah’s memories, he…came back.”
A moment of blank-faced silence passes. Peter’s lips part, just slightly.
“He’s here,” I say.
“What do you mean, here?” Peter says.
“I mean, he’s alive. In my head. It’s him.” Just saying it out loud makes me feel insane.
Peter and Rhys share a look.
“Are you kidding?” Rhys says. “Because that’s not funny.”
“Why would I joke about this?”
“Tell Rhys that I did in fact steal his socks,” Noah says.
“Noah stole your socks,” I tell Rhys.
Rhys blinks rapidly, like he’s just been punched in the nose.
Peter closes his eyes. “Can he hear us?”
“Tell Pete I can hear him just fine. I’m out of here.” And just like that, his presence evaporates in my head and I’m alone.
Pressure builds behind my eyes, but I’m done crying, even if I just gave Peter more of a reason to distrust me. After all, anytime he speaks to me, Noah could be listening. “He says hi. He just disappeared. He—he comes and goes.”
“What does that mean?” Rhys says, too loudly. But Nina doesn’t stir.
“It means he’s still alive,” Peter says, hushed. He almost glares at me now. “I told you not to copy his memories. I told you to let me do it.”
“If you had, you’d be in the same position. I can handle this.”
I hope I can handle this.
Noah is alive, in a way, and that’s the end of it. Rhys squeezes my knee once—the closest he gets to a comforting gesture—and then settles onto his side, using his hands as a pillow. After a moment, Peter pulls me down and rests my head in his lap, automatically taking first watch without discussion. I think I love him because he drops it. He doesn’t ask if I’m all right, or if I can handle it. He’s just there. His fingers stroke my hair and tuck a strand behind my ear. He has me in this position to be close to me. I can feel that. But I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking, too. That this is the best position to break my neck if I wake up as someone else.
I dream awful, terrible things.
Then the huge iron door slams open, and I spring upright so fast my feet leave the ground. I come down in a balanced stance with my hands up, but there’s no immediate danger. Commander Gane looms outside our cell, still weaponless in his black combat gear, though I guess he doesn’t need any. Across the cage, Nina is on her feet.
“The two girls come with me.”
The cell door swings open on its own. Nina and I share a look.
Peter and Rhys are wrecked from probably the worst sleep they’ve ever had, but they’re up with me, standing to my left and right.
“I’ll be fine,” I say, because it’s the only thing to say.
“I won’t ask again,” Gane says. He didn’t really ask the first time, but whatever.
Nina walks out of the cage first and turns her head to make sure I won’t rush her from behind. I follow her at a safe distance. Safe for her or safe for me, I’m not sure.
“Look sharp,” Noah says, suddenly at my elbow. “Nina is going to make a move. I know it.”
Are you guessing?
“No, it’s like before, when I showed you those images and had no idea where they came from. I can’t explain how I know what I know, but I know she’s after the Torch, and she can’t get it as a prisoner. I’ll be around.”
He disappears, and I follow Gane into the tunnel, speeding up until I’m shoulder to shoulder with Nina. I want to show her exactly how much I’m not afraid of her, which of course means I am. We’re both stiff, less from lack of sleep and more from anxiety. The medieval-style torches flicker and throw our shadows onto the walls.
“Relax, both of you,” Gane says without looking back. “I’m not leading you anywhere too sinister.” Humor? I can’t tell if that’s good or bad.
He shows us his back, and I recognize it as a taunt now. It says Try me.
Nina does, just like Noah said she would. She lashes out with the same punch I would’ve done, right on the base of his spine, but she adds her second fist to strike his kidney too, in a double punch. Both blows would send any man to his knees.
They never land. Her knuckles stop a few inches from Gane’s back and he makes a clucking sound with his tongue. It’s impossible. Her hands just stopped.
“I wondered which of you would move against me first.”
Nina’s hands rise slowly, fingers outstretched and wide, shaking. She’s not controlling them, but somehow he is.
She stares at them like they’re covered in spiders. “What are you doing?”
Her left index finger bends backward. I freeze.
“Should I snap it off?” Gane says.
“No! No!” Sweat beads her brow.
Gane gives me a lazy look. “Should I?”
I swallow. Nina looks at me, panic twisting her face. “No,” I say.
Her hands tremble as she fights his grip. Her finger is bent past the point of looking natural. Another few degrees and the bone will snap.
“No,” I say again, but have no idea why.
Gane releases her, and she clutches both hands to her chest with a moan. He starts away. “Hurry, please.”
I follow him, leaving Nina behind. She catches up, and we enter the cavernous main room, the beehive where they pulled me out of the water. The catwalks make it hard to see how many circular levels there are above us. “This is the Verge,” Gane says. “It was created to guard against whatever comes through the Black, which is directly under our feet.” Automatically I look at the floor. “Anything that comes through is immediately our prisoner.”
We stay quiet. Even though I want to ask what exactly could come through the Black.
He leads us to the main pillar in the middle. As we get closer, an elevator door opens at the base of the pillar. Gane steps inside and we follow him, even if entering the cramped space with these two goes against every natural instinct I have. Nina puts her back to the wall, but I face the door and pretend I’m not worried about a thing. Sometimes faking confidence breeds the real thing.
The elevator rises so fast my knees bend and blood rushes out of my head. A few seconds later the doors open and we step into a pyramid-shaped room, the four walls angled to a point high above.
Each wall is glass. I’ve been in a room like this before, in Mrs. North’s memory. The Original Miranda had an office in the shape of a pyramid, with glass walls, but it can’t be the same place.
I step into the room.
Each wall is glass, but what I’m seeing through them isn’t right.
“This is your first time seeing it,” Gane says behind me. I’m vaguely aware of him and Nina stepping around me. The elevator retracts into the floor, giving me a perfect view in all directions.
But I don’t understand.
“Are these windows?” They could be video screens. They have to be.
If these are windows, then the Verge is located in the middle of New York City. But the city is not the city I know from my training. We had to memorize the layouts of every major city. The skyline is off—the only thing I recognize is the Empire State Building to the east. The skyscrapers could be a thousand years old, black with age, windowless, crumbling. The sky is dark with a storm. None of the buildings have lights. They are just dark, silent shapes rising up around us, almost in
visible in the dim light. To the southwest, I recognize the wedge shape of the Flatiron Building, but it’s in the wrong place. It should be to the southeast. This is a joke.
“They’re windows,” Gane replies.
“No,” I reply, because what else can I say? I take a step forward, changing my angle, hoping to see something that will give away the illusion.
Above, the sky is thick with coal-black storm clouds from horizon to horizon. The clouds flash with thick, curling veins of purple lightning.
“A neat trick,” I say, almost too quietly for Gane to hear. “Make it go away.”
“Would that I could,” he says.
Gane walks to a large desk at the north end of the room. He sits down behind it and folds his hands on the smooth wooden surface. There are no chairs for me and Nina. We all flicker purple with the lightning flashes overhead. No thunder comes, and no rain.
“Who are you?” Gane says. He seems to be asking both of us.
Nina speaks first. “It doesn’t matter. My offer to remove the eyeless from your world is what matters.”
I feel like a poker player without the right cards. I have nothing to offer him, and his face seems to brighten whenever Nina brings up taking the eyeless away.
“You tried to assault me a few minutes ago,” he says.
“Can you blame me for attempting to escape?”
Gane ignores her. “And you,” he says to me. “Does your sister really know the location of the Torch?”
I glance at Nina, but she’s facing forward, staring out at the dead skyscrapers that aren’t quite right.
“What is this?” I say.
“Answer me, and then I’ll tell you.”
It’s hard to breathe now.
“Answer me,” he says again. “Does she know where the Torch is?”
Maybe the truth will set me free.
“I don’t know. And she’s not my sister.”
Gane frowns. “That’s where I’m confused,” he says. “It’s clear you’re not on the same side here.”
“We’re not,” I say. Now he gets it. “Where are we?”
He opens a drawer in his desk and pulls out a crystal carafe filled with a ruby red liquid, wine, most likely. He pours it into a small glass and takes a sip.