And just like that, the switch is flipped. Dream Jared disappears in a painful cloud of disappointment. In his place comes a singsong voice I know as well as my own.
“Lu. Lu Lu Lu Lu Lu.” Margot.
I struggle through a knot of cold, helpless emptiness. Pain has become fastened onto the back of my eyelids, cementing them down. The coin tied around my neck jingles slightly as I struggle, but the moment I start to move, my head throbs violently.
I hold still for a moment before experimenting with my lips. They are swollen and tender, my mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood. “Mar-got.” I mouth the word in our quiet-quiet way, unwilling to take another blow. I’m not sure I’d survive, at any rate.
And if there is one thought I take with me through the shadows into the light, it’s this: I want to survive. Need to survive. Not just for Margot. For Jared.
The thought becomes a loud roar in my mind, thick through all the cells of my body. I need Jared Price. I need to see him again, touch him again, with a desperation I don’t understand.
“Lu, Lu,” Margot’s voice insists. She tugs on one arm, the tight band on her flesh clawing at her wrist. I would have missed it in the inventory of our bodies had she not called attention to it.
There. That small scrap of fragile flesh where the forearm meets the elbow. It has been months since I’ve felt that same tender bruising, exactly like it feels after we’ve been pushed through a round of Protocols.
Our captors have been stealing our blood.
I lift my head. The Watcher is gone. My sister’s face is wan with concern, still streaked from plaster and building dust. But I see in them something else, something I’d give days and nights of my life to erase. Fear.
My lips barely move as we enter our private patter, but they still split and hurt. “What’re they after?”
Margot gives a tight shrug of her head. “Dunno. No words. Just Protocols.”
I spit a small circle of blood on the ground. It barely makes an impression on the rough and filthy stone flags. “How much?”
“Four.” Four draws. That’s quite a lot of blood to work with for whatever test they had in mind.
“How long?”
Margot’s lips compress into a tight line. She knows what I’m asking. “An hour maybe. Losing track already.” Her eyes glitter with words she hasn’t said, the panic that I can feel jutting into my bones at sharp angles. This isn’t her first time playing captive. She’d never spoken of it, but I knew that was one of the things that bothered her most, both after Clive and the attendants at the Protocols clinic took her and then, especially, once she’d come home from Russia.
Time doesn’t work the same when people keep it from you, she’d told me. I’ve lost what feels like years of my life, though it’s only been months.
Margot clears her throat. “What now?”
I think this through. What would Jared do? What would he tell me to do, since it’s unlikely I’ll be able to rip apart our captors with my bare hands and snarl at them until they wet themselves. What would Jared want me to do?
“We get smart,” I tell Margot, barely recognizing the sound of my voice as the kernel of my plan takes shape in my mind. “Picture,” I say, plastering a bright smile on my face.
I feel brighter the moment she gets it. Margot blinks once, twice. “Tell,” she says. And like we have a million times in the past, like we’re children with nothing to gain but our mastery over the world, I lay out my plan for our survival—our victorious escape, I tell myself fiercely—through the hushed, staccato rhythms of one of our oldest word games.
I almost smile as I start us off. “Door.”
…
We’d gone silent a long time before a new Watcher comes in, though it takes us a few moments to realize that there are others, too, hidden behind us. The shuffle of their bodies and the scrape of their shoes on the flag floor the only signs. A small, whiffling cough.
The Watcher stands before the symbol on the wall, eerily haloed by a light I’ve only just discovered. He’s shorter and bulkier than the other, biceps straining under a tight, dirty white shirt that looks as though the neck has been ripped off it. I take in the straining breeches, the beginnings of a tear starting in the knee.
He looks like any other Laster you’d pass on the streets, though perhaps a shade better fed. His face is shiny under the glow of the lights. A greasy lock of his hair pulls over his forehead. No symbol on this one’s face.
The thought burns through me, stomach dropping to my numb toes, as a crackling sound, like the scratching of metallic claws, fills the tiny chamber. Margot and I hazard a glance at each other. Her rising panic fills my veins with adrenaline. I shake my head slightly, the pain helping me to break Margot’s hold on me. She taps her chair with one bent finger. Picture.
Listen.
A tinny voice booms through the air. “Misses Fox.” I wince as the voice curls up into a high-pitched whine. Even the man before us hunches his shoulders. But worse—I know that voice. It haunts my dreams. Margot taps insistently at her thigh, trying to get my attention. She knows, too, I reckon.
Father Wes has finally claimed his quarry.
17
“Now, girls.” The voice booms and crackles through an inept speaker system. “You must be asking yourselves why you’re here. No?” He continues as though we were supposed to answer. “Perhaps we’ll leave that tale for another time, then.”
Margot and I share a look. Should we have spoken up? Yelled? Acknowledged him in some way? The last time we came across Father Wes, when, with an army of Lasters, he attacked and destroyed our home, he struck me as a man who needed an audience. The preacher man will tell us eventually—he won’t be able to help himself. I give Margot the slightest shake of my head. Stay silent, I warn her with my eyes.
“Here’s how this is going to go. Brother Noah there in front of you is going to unlock you one at a time and escort you to the bathroom. You’ll be given food. Then it will be the other’s turn. Should you give Brother Noah here any trouble, we’ll start chopping off your fingers and toes. Any questions?”
I can hear it in his voice, clear as day. He’s longing for a chance to hurt us. I nod at Brother Noah. Whatever happens, we want him to believe we’re cooperating.
But I reckon I have a perverse streak, because I can’t help but croak, “What happens when you run out of fingers and toes?”
Margot swivels her head over to me, the look on her face showing me what she thinks of my dumb heroics.
Father Wes’s metallic chuckle fills the air. “Why, we’ll start killing your darling True Borns.”
Not our parents, I notice. Not our friends from the Upper Circle. If he’s not threatening our parents then he likely doesn’t have them. What intel has Shane been feeding them? Because if there’s one thing I’m certain of now, it’s that Shane is working with these monsters. I choke down a sob. The man I once trusted with our lives was just another betrayer. He doesn’t deserve my tears.
“Thank you for the clarification.”
The chuckle dies to a dull rasp. “One false move, little Fox, and I’ll be cutting off your tail.”
I ignore him and turn my attention to the man before me. “Her first,” I tell Brother Noah bravely. His eyes are mean little pebbles set back in his face. Bluish lips twitch from side to side. He just stands there, looking at me as if I’m a bug he’d like to squash beneath his heel. The loud voice of Father Wes breaks through the air again.
“Brother Noah, please see to the girls. Mouthy one first.”
As Brother Noah’s shadow falls over me, I try not to recoil. He reeks of boiled cabbage and urine and the peculiar stench of the unwashed. I lean back in my chair as far as I can as the Watcher takes his time, no doubt enjoying this.
My hands come free. I rub the skin of my wrists, a raw tattoo. My jailer’s face is lost in shadows as he grunts and indicates with a nod of shaggy hair to follow him through the narrow door.
I t
ake a last look at Margot. Her eyes flicker to catch the subtle tap, one two three, of my finger on my wrist. Her eyes widen slightly, then flutter closed briefly. Satisfied that Margot has understood, I rise on unsteady legs. I’m clumsy as I follow the dirty, stinking Watcher past his robed brothers guarding the room and out the small metal door. My muscles ache from sitting, accompanied by the needlelike sting of blood flowing again.
We pass through a narrow, garishly lit passageway, all but three feet across. The walls look like earth but harder. In a few paces we come to a small room with moldy tile walls covered in the filthy red insignia of the Watchers. There is a bathroom stall, a sink, a mirror caked with red circles. Brother Noah motions me in.
I stand there, eyeing him with obvious reluctance.
“Are you just going to stand there?” I ask, looking down at my feet. “I don’t think I can if you…”
Brother Noah snorts. He finds my feminine shyness amusing, no doubt. Crossing his bulky arms, he moves to stand around the corner but no farther. He’ll not be worried about my escape in here. And as I examine the space, I can see why.
The lock has been torn from the stall door. The walls are barren, without images or windows save the Watchers’ signs. Evolve or die cuts across my mind like an endless litany. Needing a distraction, I picture Jared. He springs vividly to mind. I can see his serious face, drawn and pinched over the nose, can almost smell that peculiar cinnamon scent of his skin. First things first, Dream Jared tells me sternly. Pay attention. What do you see?
…
A few embarrassing moments later I shuffle out of the stall and stare at myself in the mirror. In the reflection, my face is crisscrossed with red circles, one line coming up under my cheek like a violent swirl of blush. My eyes are huge, the pupils blown. Concussion, my addled brain decides. The long waves of my hair have become helplessly tangled. I touch a tender spot on my head. It comes away red. I pull at the water taps; it takes as long, grinding moment for the water to pour. A trickle appears and it’s rusty, the pipes near to bursting with air. Then it runs in spits and sparks, though foul.
“This smells like fish,” I call out to my guard.
A snicker is the only reply I get. I slap the foul-smelling water on my face, keep my wrists submerged as long as I can as a memory hopscotches through my mind. How had the childhood lesson gone?
Clean and pure piped in for the Splicers, sitting in their towers.
Fetid and fishy ’round Lake Dominion’s shores.
While the Lasters in the center have their plugs pulled.
It was a children’s rhyme, one we Upper Circle kids had passed down from generation to generation. Just words, cruel and unkind. But they taught us who we were, where we were from.
Where we are.
“Hurry up.”
“Coming.” I twist off the tap.
We must be near the lake.
When they’re being kind, they call this area the Lowlands, though I’ve heard it called the Graveyard, too. There’s nothing around the area rimming the lake but industrial buildings, crumbling to dust from lack of use. The kids’ song is meant to make us afraid. Everyone knows that the lake has been used as a mass dumping ground for years, when the Plague came on too strong and in the chaos there weren’t enough hands to bury the dead.
Which is worse? Drinking the flotsam of the dead? Or having no water at all?
It’s a question I’d as soon not ponder as I’m marched back down the long earthen tunnel. He doesn’t touch me, but I can feel Brother Noah’s eyes raking over my back. I send Margot a breezy smile as I sit back in the wooden chair like a duchess at her tea and wait for the Watchers to lock me up again. And then I fight the urge the smile when they don’t seem to know what to do with this attitude.
Once they have me clamped, Margot is loosed. I keep a keen eye on her as she rises, stiff and sore, but am relieved that my sense of her is strong and sure as she slowly makes her way to the door, head held high.
…
Margot taps her leg. “Well?” she whispers in our quiet-quiet way. “You reckon there’s any way out?”
My neck is sore as I turn my head to speak. “No.”
A dull look comes into Margot’s eyes. I can’t afford to have her give up. But it’s not my way to lie to my twin. Besides, she’s seen it herself. “I think we’re underground. Near the lake.”
Margot’s voice swells with conviction. “They’ll come for us, though.”
“Yes,” I say at once. She’s right. I know the True Borns will look for us, too. At least, they’ll try. I’ve avoided thinking about Jared for the past several hours, but now he flares back to life in my mind.
Is he going crazy right now? After all, this is the man who tracked me onto a cruise ship, who’d gone through hell and back to be sure I was safe. But if he cares about me, why has he all but disappeared from our lives, ever since Shane came back? But Shane is a traitor, I remind myself. He’s been working with the Watchers, which can only mean… It was all a set up. Shane somehow convinced Storm to reassign Jared.
And even if Jared does come for me… How will he track us underground?
Serena’s milky white eyes and wide, generous smile float before my thinning vision. I see you, she’s told me. Serena sees nothing, nobody, but True Borns. It’s her Salvager gift. But she can see us, too.
“Don’t worry, Margot,” I croak. I’m fading and I can’t hold on. “Just remembered they have a Salvager.” It’s my last thought before I’m rushed to painful sleep.
…
A tearing pain at my wrists pulls at my consciousness. Drops of heavy black rain fall on the insides of my eyelids, remnants of the dream that won’t go. I stir and glance over at Margot, who saws the thin blades of her wrist back and forth beneath the thick metal cuff of her restraint. The skin is scratched to ribbons, with thin rivulets of blood rolling beneath the metal.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
Margot turns mad eyes on me. “Got to get out of here.” Her teeth chatter. She feels cold, numb. Hot. Crazed.
“Margot, calm down. Stop panicking and get smart.”
This stops her in her tracks. “You weren’t here.”
I send my twin a wry smile. “I passed out. Not by choice.”
“Don’t do that,” she pleads.
“I’ll try not to,” I promise her. “How long have I been out, do you reckon?”
Margot shakes her head. “There’s no time in the grave.”
It’s true. There’s a distinct lack of clocks, noise, anything other than the shuffling of our feet on the dirty floor or the breath in our chests. We’re used to doomsday clocks. We’re used to large grandfather clocks in foyers and drawing rooms that while away the hours with the Upper Circle socialites.
We’re not used to tombs.
“You’re hurting me.” I nod my head to her wrist.
“What does it matter if you’re dead?” she whispers.
“But I’m not dead.”
“Will be.”
“Mar,” I break in patiently, “we can’t afford to think like that.”
My beautiful sister shakes her head. “You don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
For a moment I think she won’t. Her face draws in on itself, shuttered and tortured, while her panic ricochets inside me. But she holds it together. “I learned some things while I was…away.”
I perk up. “What kind of things?”
Margot glances around, worrying at her lips. “Do you think it’s safe to talk here?”
I consider this. Though I can see no evidence of listening devices, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any. “Safer to assume not.”
She nods. “Once they get what they want from us, they plan on killing us.”
My tone turns sharp as a knife. “How do you know this?”
“Something Leo said.” She hides her face behind her hair.
“You tell me what you know. Right now,” I warn.
She doesn’t look at me as she nods, just sits behind the shiny curtain of her hair as though contemplating something. Then she raises her head and shrugs. “What does it matter if we’re going to die anyway?” I open my mouth to protest when she tugs at her wrist cuffs. “While I was with him, I was put through so many more Protocols. But he was angry. Like Father with the rabble. Remember?” A ghost of a smile pulls at Margot’s lips. “Leo said his partners had betrayed him. That’s why I had to go through so much more, because he had to get it first.”
“What? Get what, Mar?” I burn with anger. How could they treat her this way? And then I heat for another reason: how could Margot keep something so important from me?
But Margot shakes her head again. “Don’t know. Something about our blood. Mine. They had…plans.”
I nod. “The babies. I know.” Sharp lightning bolts of pain crack through me. “Mar, get a hold of yourself,” I tell her sternly, “I can’t think through this.” I take a deep breath. Turn it off; just turn it off, Jared’s voice whispers to me. I’ve done it before, but never with my sister so near. The link between us doesn’t disappear completely, but Margot’s overwhelming emotions fade to a dull roar. “So what was it?”
“What?”
“The plan? What was being betrayed?”
“Plague serum. One for them—a real cure. And for everyone else a temporary cure they could control to make gobs of money.”
The chains rattle on my wrist as I sputter. “A-And you’re only thinking of telling me this now?”
“You can’t believe anything they say,” she argues.
“I’m beginning to think I can’t believe a word you say.”
It’s the meanest thing I’ve ever said to Margot. And as I stare at my sister, the person I know best in the world, I can’t help but think she’s a stranger.
“How can you—” she starts defensively.
But my anger spills over like a storm cloud, and I unleash it on her. “How dare you keep this from me, Margot? You may have information that could have prevented this. You could know things that are so important to our future well-being, to our family, yet you selfishly decided to keep them to yourself. You kept them from me, Margot.” I can feel my face flush, my skin hot and bursting in time with the painful throb of my skull. I turn my head, unable to even look at my sister.
True Storm Page 17