Fragmented

by Madeline Dyer

  My hands freeze. Oh Gods. That’s why he got me to leave. He wasn’t going to wash blood off. No. He was getting me out the way, getting me—

  “What?” Esther says.

  I turn to her, heart pounding too fast. “I stabbed Jed…and Corin’s going to…going to kill him.”

  Esther’s eyes get even wider. “What? You stabbed him?” She looks uncertain. “What did Jed do?”

  “Come on!” I grab her hand, pull her out of the store room. “We’ve got to stop him!”

  The corridor’s even busier now, and we try to weave through the men and women and children, but they’re stepping out in front of us, and I can’t get past them quick enough. And Esther’s slow, pulling on my arm, making it ache.

  My feet pound the ground. I feel dizzy, lightheaded. Can feel pressure in my ears. But I see the room up ahead, on the left. The doorway with the swinging, tartan drape.

  I barge in, Esther right behind me, and—

  The room is empty.

  I look around, clutch at my chest, at my mother’s pendant. It’s burning.

  But the room is empty. Jed’s not here.

  Neither is Corin.

  “Is that more blood? Is this where—where it happened?”

  I look up, see Esther on the other side of the room. She’s standing over the pool of blood. It’s glistening. And there’s so much of it. More than I remember.

  “What’s that?” Esther’s hand starts shaking. Then she bends down, picks up my engagement ring.

  Footsteps. Heavy. Quick. Someone running. A man, probably.

  Seconds later, Corin bursts through the doorway.

  “I thought those were your voices.” He’s got a clean shirt on, but he doesn’t look happy. “What the hell are you doing back here? I told you to stay in Esther’s room!”

  I stand up shakily. “Where’s Jed?” My voice wobbles.

  Corin looks around, his face whitens. “I left him here.”

  “Alive?”

  “Yes!” he yells. “Oh, shit.”

  Jed’s not here now… He’s gone. My chest hitches. He’s gone, walked out? Gone to tell everyone? Oh Gods. The Zharat’ll be here in a matter of seconds.

  I look at Corin, then Esther as she walks toward us. “We have to go now.”

  But Corin’s not moving. He’s just standing there in front of me. And then—then I see what he’s holding, what’s been in his hands the whole time.

  I go cold, feel all the air rush out of me.

  “What…” I begin, but I can’t say any more, won’t say any more. I swallow hard, feel more bile rise in my throat.

  The colors wink at me. Pale blue and neon orange. They flash under the burning light, jolt as Corin lifts them up.

  I look at him, try to keep my breathing normal. “Why… Why’ve you got them?” I swallow hard, can’t say their names. Mustn’t say their names.

  My thighs burn, burn with energy.

  Go on. Take them.

  “What’s going on?” Esther steps forward, steps in front of me, blocks them from my sight.

  Corin grunts, steps closer. “Sev? Want to explain?”

  I try to move my lips, try to say something. But I can’t make a sound, my voice, it just won’t work.

  And then Corin’s stepping around Esther. He thrusts the vials at me, expects me to catch hold of them eagerly. But I don’t move, force my arms to stay by my sides. Wince as the glass smashes on the floor, as the liquid runs out, toward me, begging me. I feel it against my bare feet. Cold.

  Corin steps up to me, his face right against mine. “How long this time, Sev?” he asks. “How long have you been using augmenters?”

  I take a step back. The Calmness—and whatever the neon orange ones are—runs over my toes, and I grimace, have to get away from it. But it’s sticky, it’s holding me down. I swallow hard, and Corin’s still in front of me. No one’s moved, no one’s doing anything.

  “You’re Enhanced?” Esther says at last. She’s looking at me strangely, head inclined as if she’s trying to see mirrors in my eyes.

  I shake my head, try to keep my breathing even.

  Remember how good it felt to be Enhanced?

  My back stiffens. I mustn’t look down.

  “They’re not mine… I don’t…” I turn my head as much as my neck will allow, can’t risk looking at them. “Get them away from me.”

  But they don’t move. Neither of them moves.

  “Promise me.” Corin touches my shoulder. I jump. “Promise me you’re not lying.”

  “I promise. I’m not lying.” My voice is weak.

  Then his arms snap around me, and he lifts me up over the sticky mess, and I try not to look, I really do. But I can’t help it. I see the colors on the floor, swirling together in an intricate pattern among the broken glass.

  Pain flits through my chest.

  “Where did you find them?” Esther asks.

  “The edge of the washing zone. Hidden under some clean towels,” Corin says.

  I swallow hard. “Whose… Whose augmenters are they?”

  “One of the Zharat?” Esther suggests. Then she frowns. “One of the Zharat’s been taking augmenters? One of them’s Enhanced?”

  Corin’s glare gets deeper. “Whoever it is, I’m going to catch him, and I’m going to take him to Manning. Expose the monster.”

  “We need to go to Manning now,” Esther says. “We can’t go and confront someone who’s secretly Enhanced.”

  “We did with Rahn,” Corin says, a dangerous look in his eyes. “And Manning wouldn’t believe us, not if it was just our word against whichever Zharat it is. No, we’re taking the traitor to his chief.”

  The thought of seeing Manning—when he’ll most likely know I stabbed Jed—makes me go cold. I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth for a few seconds. “I thought we were all leaving.”

  Corin turns on me in an instant. His eyes flash. “I’m not leaving when I know there’s a Zharat who’s Enhanced here. Gods, he could do anything—he could be in contact with other Enhanced, or…or converting children. Innocent children.” He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, and I think of how his parents died in a conversion attack.

  Corin stoops, picks something off the floor. It’s the knife. The knife I used to stab Jed.

  “It’s just a question of waiting him out down there. He’ll go back for his augmenters at some point. And I’ll get him, threaten to kill him if he doesn’t confess to Manning, show what a monster he really is—pretending to be one of us. Huh. Manning will probably slit his throat anyway.” He pauses and breathes hard. “You two, you better get out of here now. I’ll join you once I’ve sorted this out.”

  Esther reaches for my hand. Her face is ashen.

  I shake my head, eyes on Corin. “You’re not dealing with an Enhanced Zharat on your own. Safety in numbers.”

  It doesn’t take us long to get there, down the tubes to the washing zone. Corin goes first—he’s got the knife, and he holds it out in front of him. Esther and I walk side by side after him, trying to keep a lookout on all directions. Esther squeezes my hand.

  I swallow hard, look around. It’s the exact same place where I fell in the river before, where the kavalah came out of me. I try not to look at the water, but there’s not a lot of it anyway now. Not a lot at all. There hasn’t been much rain, so the Great River’s starving, and the generators aren’t creating much electricity.

  Corin points to two baskets near the far wall. They’re next to where the fold-up chairs are now stacked. “That’s where I found the augmenters. Behind the baskets, I was getting a shirt out, but the basket moved, and I saw there’s a groove in the wall there, with some towels stacked in it. But I pulled them out, thought there might be some shirts there too, and the augmenters were under the bottom towel.” He crosses over to them, stepping over the narrowest part of the water channel in one stride. “No, there aren’t any left now.”

  I scratch at the back of my neck as Esther
and I join Corin by the baskets. The skin there feels sore, rough, broken. “So, we just wait here?”

  Corin nods, then points to the nearest corner. “We’ll wait over there. Better if we’re hidden.”

  I feel sick as I follow him, and a glance at Esther tells me she’s shaking. We shouldn’t be doing this. If one of the Zharat is Enhanced, we should be telling Manning. Or someone.

  Corin pulls me closer to him as we reach the corner, but then lets go. It’s not an embrace, and, for a moment, I feel upset. Then I get a grip on myself. I breathe out steadily, my eyes trying to pick out shapes on the far wall. It’s the darkest part of the washing zone there, and I can just about make out an animal hide hanging up against the rock. An antelope’s hide. No. I peer at it, leaning forward slightly. There’s more than one animal’s hide there—several sewn together to make a larger covering that sways very slightly where it hangs. And there’s another one, bunched up on the floor at the bottom of the wall.

  “Here, Seven.”

  I turn, see Esther picking something up off the floor, a few feet away. A white, sleeveless dress. She holds it out to me.

  “You’d better change—it’s best not to walk around with blood on your clothes.”

  I nod and take it from her, then strip off my violet shirt and the denim skirt—aware that Corin is so near, but he’s not watching me now. His eyes are on the baskets where he found the augmenters, a hard look in his face. I slip on the knee-length dress. Part of me feels strange as I wear it. I’ve never seen any women wear white—we’re supposed to wear colors. Maybe it’s white because it’s ready to be dyed. I shrug.

  “Do we just wait?” Esther whispers a moment later.

  “Yes.” Corin’s voice is curt. A muscle throbs in his jaw. The knife in his hand glistens strangely. “He’ll come.”

  “Why’d you think it’s a man?”

  “Because he’s had to get the augmenters somewhere,” Corin says. “And the women don’t go on raids—I asked.”

  Esther clears her throat. “What if it wasn’t a Zharat?”

  I look at her. “What?”

  She pales. “We—we assumed that the augmenters belong to a Zharat. What if they don’t? What if proper Enhanced Ones are here? Non-Zharat.”

  “If the Enhanced are here, we’d all know about it,” Corin says. “They’d have started conversion attacks. That’s what they do. No, this is a Zharat thinking he can get away with it and still pretend to be Untamed.”

  I know he’s right—we would know if any Enhanced Ones, ones who weren’t Zharat, were here—but as we wait, I can’t help but think about what Esther said. If there’s a chance those augmenters could belong to an Enhanced Ones—a fully Enhanced One—then we should be warning everyone. We should be doing it now.

  “Who do you think it is?” I ask, mainly to distract myself.

  “I’d love it to be Jed, love to see him die,” Corin mutters. “But my heart says it’s not. He had that leg injury, didn’t he? Augmenters would’ve cleared that up faster, right? And he never seemed calm ever.”

  I shrug and look down; the Zharat mark on my arm, from when I was welcomed officially into the tribe, seems smaller.

  “There are hundreds of Zharat here,” Esther points out. “It’s probably going to be someone we don’t know.”

  I breathe deeply. The room is still, the air heavy. There’s no breeze in here. Then I frown and look back toward the patchwork animal hide on the opposite wall.

  It’s moving.

  The whole hide is swaying.

  Tingling sensations run down my spine.

  I step toward it.

  “Sev, what are you doing?” Corin’s voice is low.

  I point at the joined hides as I swallow. “It moved… There’s….”

  I frown, try to work out where exactly in the mountain we are. I think we’re near the edge, not deep in the lava tubes.

  The hide moves again. Corin swears, then he’s lunging forward. He grabs the leather, pulls it down, and—and we stare.

  The wind rushes through, catches my skin, makes the bottom of my dress ripple.

  “It’s an exit?” Esther says the words slowly, looks first at me and then at Corin.

  I step nearer, look through the gap. The walls are thick. Very thick. But I can see long grass and the sky at the end, about ten feet away. I look away quickly, my heart racing.

  “That wasn’t there before,” Esther says.

  I turn to her slowly.

  “What?”

  “Before—I was here. Manning took me here. We… It was this wall we sat against so he could purify me—it was after we’d tried to escape, and he thought you were spies,” she says quickly. “He said he had to purify me.” She points at the tunnel. “I am absolutely sure it wasn’t there then.” She shakes her head then. “No. It wasn’t. Neither was the hide. It’s all new.”

  I frown, try to remember if I’ve ever seen that tube before. I can’t remember there being an exit here, but would I have noticed it, especially if the heavy hide had been hanging up? I can’t remember.

  Corin pushes past me, a little roughly, then touches the inside of the tube wall, runs his fingers over it.

  “It’s sharp, uneven,” he says. “Like it’s been knapped really recently. The walls aren’t smooth like all the other tubes. And this opening is man-made—you can see the marks.”

  I reach forward, touch the walls. The lava would be brittle enough to knock a new tube through it—to the outside world. On the floor of the new exit, there are several stone flakes. I pick one up, turn it over in my fingers. There’s still dust on it.

  “So it’s been made sometime in the last week?” Esther’s voice sounds thick. “Because it definitely wasn’t here when Manning was purifying me. And they’ve tried to disguise it with the hide.”

  “But we would’ve heard someone knocking an exit through here.” I wipe my hands on the white dress, try to get the dust off my fingers. “Making a tube like that would be noisy. Everyone would hear, wouldn’t they?” I frown. “Or would the mountain absorb it?”

  Corin shrugs. “Things work differently here, in the Noir Lands. The normal rules don’t always apply, especially with so many spirits about.”

  I frown. “But why would someone make an exit here—why not just use one of the others? Be a lot less work.”

  “Maybe someone wanted their own exit. One only they know about,” Corin says.

  The Enhanced would want their own exit. They’d want to be able to come and go undetected.

  I inhale sharply, push that thought away. I’m wrong. There aren’t any Enhanced here.

  But there are augmenters.

  Yet they belong to one of the Zharat, don’t they? I touch the bridge of my nose, frowning hard. They’ve got to. Corin was right earlier—there can’t be any Enhanced here because we’d know already.

  We’d have seen them.

  Yet you didn’t see the Marouska-imposter for who she really was. And she was Enhanced.

  But she was posing as one of us—to keep me addicted to augmenters, she wasn’t there to convert the others herself as Raleigh must’ve thought he’d get all of us once Marouska lured us to him, and—

  And then I go cold.

  An Enhanced was posing as Marouska—as one of us. That’s how we didn’t spot her for who she was.

  And—

  Oh Gods.

  My chest tightens.

  Mart. Jed. Esther.

  My eyes widen—it can’t be… But they all said… They all accused me of… Oh Gods!

  I look at Corin, then Esther.

  I gulp. My stomach feels heavy, and my mouth’s dry. Like I’m going to be sick.

  But I’ve got to tell them.

  I have to.

  “They’re here,” I say. “The Enhanced are here.”

  Corin shakes his head. “They can’t be. The Enhanced don’t know where the Zharat live—and we’d have seen them if they were.”

  “People have,” I
say.

  Esther frowns.

  And suddenly it’s so obvious now. And I think of the words—those accusations…how certain each person was. How I even considered I was going mad.

  “I know what they look like…” My mind whirs faster and faster, until I think I’m going to explode. “The Enhanced. They’re here, and I know who they are.” The words drags against my lips. “Or, at least, who one of them is.”

  “What? Who?”

  I take a deep breath. “It’s me—there’s a clone of me here.”

  For a second, neither of them reacts. They stare at me. Then the corners of Corin’s lips twitch.

  “What?”

  “There’s a clone of me.” I tug on my hair, feeling sick. “It makes sense. People are seeing me where I’m not—and Mart said he heard me planning a conversion attack, with a radio, or something. And after that, he said something to me too that confused me—that he knows what I am, or something.” I point at Esther. “And you said you saw me outside. And Jed did too, before. He thought I’d been outside.”

  Still, Corin and Esther just stare at me.

  “Did you see Sev outside?” Corin asks her after a long pause.

  She nods. “I—yeah. It looked like her. I was… I was sure it was her.”

  I nod. “It’s the only explanation. That’s who the augmenters belong to—not a Zharat.” The words taste strange. “The Enhanced are here—and they’ve made that exit, so they can get in here.”

  Esther frowns. “But Mart… He accused you of planning a conversion attack…a week ago. So, that means there’s been an Enhanced One hiding among us here for a week. And no one realized.”

  I bite my lip for a second, feel the hairs rising up on the back of my neck. “There’ll be more than one, then. Maybe not in the tubes as well, but somewhere about—outside… They always work in packs….”

  “More clones of you?” Corin clears his throat suddenly, eyes narrowing at me. “Tell me something only you’d know.”

  “What? Why?” My eyes narrow. Then I realize it. I know what he’s thinking—about how I was acting, how forward I was with him before… He even said I wasn’t behaving normally… Oh Gods… He might think… But if I was, why would I tell him about the clone I think’s here?