Pretty Monster

by Somers, Jill

  She laughed out loud.

  “You think that’s funny?” Dash challenged her.

  She hated him. She really did. After all that had happened between them, for him to keep so many secrets from her—for him to know of her imminent demise—all of their imminent demises—and do nothing, say nothing… It disgusted her.

  “I do, actually,” she said, chest rising and falling rapidly. “I have a question for the class, if I may.”

  He spread his arms as if to say, Why not?

  “How many of you feel that way?” she asked the class. “Like maybe you’ve made some mistakes, but you’ve got plenty of time to sort it all out?”

  Most of the class raised their hands.

  “Right,” she said, rising to her feet. She knew it was a mistake, but at this point, she had so little to lose. A little justification before she went, a little satisfaction… And then, if she was lucky, she could get herself and Rory out of there before it was too late. “And what if I were to tell you all that you’re going to die? Not in a few decades, not in a few years, but soon? Any day now?”

  Most of them stared at her like she was insane. Those select few—the ones working with Dash—were looking at her with a different expression.

  Fear.

  “What’s wrong, Dash?” she asked. “Am I saying too much? Revealing too many secrets? Or are you just mad that I finally figured it out?”

  “Quinn,” he said slowly, taking a step toward her. “Stop.”

  “The way I see it, if an island full of people is going to die, they have the right to know about it. But I guess that’s the difference between you and me.”

  Dash wasn’t ultimately the one who lunged for her. Trent was.

  But it didn’t matter. She was gone before any of them could touch her.

  She’d always been good at running.

  • • •

  Her mind ran through a million different thoughts as she scrambled out of the classroom and sprinted out of the building. What had she done? Word was going to spread, and with it, panic. Students and residents alike would try to run, flee, or fight; it would become utter madness. All thanks to her.

  And yet… so what? It was the truth. Didn’t they all deserve to know? Hadn’t she? Whatever Dash had or hadn’t known, whatever he had or hadn’t been in on, he had to have known of the imminent danger. It had to be the secret he had been keeping from her. And, frankly, how could he? How could any of them?

  She knew she had to leave; she knew Savannah would be after her the moment she heard who had started all this. But she also knew she couldn’t leave without Rory. She zipped through what little she knew of Rory’s schedule in her mind, trying to piece it together… Where would the girl be? She could try her phone, but the odds of her answering it were slim…

  It didn’t matter, she learned; Rory was standing right outside of the exit to the building.

  “Rory,” Quinn gasped. “How—?”

  “I don’t know. I think we have some kind of mind link at this point. I heard your thoughts again… I sensed that you were looking for me… and I just sort of found you.”

  Quinn wanted to linger on that, whether to ask her questions or even just to mentally process the fact that someone could now read her mind, but she knew there wasn’t time. She grabbed Rory by the arm. “We’ve got to go.”

  Quinn began her sprint again, a sprint that could hold its own against Charlie’s. Rory kept up mostly by way of Quinn’s strength, but she didn’t seem to like it.

  “Where are we going?” Rory demanded as they ran.

  “To the river. We’ll follow it downstream and dive under at the wall. I almost did it once before… I just got caught in the waterfall.”

  “We can’t run away!” Rory insisted, digging in her heels and refusing to keep up. Quinn groaned, picking the girl up entirely and carrying her as she continued to run. “Quinn, these people are in trouble and they don’t even know it.”

  “Oh, they know. I told them. And now my ass is on the line. I have to leave, Rory. And I can’t leave you here to die.”

  Rory stared up at her, eyes suddenly big and childlike. Afraid. It reminded Quinn how young Rory was for the first time in a long time.

  They had reached the river. They were downstream from the waterfall; there was nothing stopping them. Quinn stopped moving just long enough to look Rory in the eye.

  “I know you don’t want to go,” she said softly. “I won’t make you, Rory. But things are about to get very, very bad here. I can’t leave you behind. Not unless you swear to me that’s what you want.”

  Rory looked down at the water, considering her answer.

  But she didn’t get the chance.

  “Quinn!”

  Quinn and Rory looked up at the waterfall in shock as Dash crashed down it, into the river, and then straight up into the air. Quinn may have thought she was bad at flying, she mused, but he was terrible; he fell to the ground so hard that it shook.

  She wanted to laugh. She wanted to make fun of him, to joke with him, even to ask if he was okay. All of the things that she couldn’t do.

  For all she knew, he was there to kill her.

  She stepped directly in front of Rory. She glared at him, fingers balling up into fists. “We’re leaving, Dash,” she said, voice darker and lower than it had ever been with him before.

  “You can’t,” he said, shaking his head, still sputtering water. “Quinn—”

  But she didn’t give him a chance to finish. She blasted him with the strongest burst of electricity that she had ever conjured. It was, she was certain, an ability that had been magnified because of her connection with Rory.

  He went flying, slamming into the ground again, arms-first, cursing in pain. But he stood, coming back over to her. “You don’t understand. If we could just—”

  She blasted him again, this time with fire. She focused all of the flames of the hell she refused to believe in into that blast. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to hurt every one of them who had been keeping this painful truth from her.

  “Stop it!” Rory shouted at her, tugging at her sleeve, voice high-pitched and afraid. “Quinn, he just wants to talk to us!”

  But it was no use. Quinn’s mind had gone into a rage, and her powers along with it. All she cared about was getting out of there. She hit him with another wave—this time, of ice.

  Rather, she tried.

  Nothing happened.

  Rory stood in front of her, facing her, chest heaving. Beads of sweat ran down her face. Behind her, Quinn could see Dash rising.

  “We are going,” Rory told Quinn, “to hear him out.”

  “Rory,” Quinn said just as slowly. “Stop it.”

  “No. You let him speak, or you don’t get your abilities back. Not as long as you have me with you.”

  Quinn was amazed—not only by Rory’s power, but by her spunk. In fact, if the girl reminded her of anyone, it was of herself.

  If Quinn wasn’t mistaken, she read the same thought on Dash’s face.

  She sighed. “Fine.”

  Rory came back to stand next to Quinn, both of them turning to face Dash, who shakily found his footing.

  “We don’t have much time,” he said. “I left Charlie with the class to try to salvage what was left of it. The island is going to split down the middle. The resistance and those who are putting their trust in Savannah.”

  “And you’re saying you’re not one of them?” Quinn asked him. “That you’re not in the alliance?”

  He blinked, confused. “The alliance?”

  “Savannah’s army,” Rory explained to him. “The people she wants to save before she kills the rest of us. The ones she’s convinced are tame, we expect.”

  Dash’s eyes widened. This really did seem to be news to him. “I knew she was corrupt. I knew she was planning something. But I had no idea.”

  “Even if you didn’t know about the alliance,” Quinn said, “you’ve been hiding things from the beginning.
Including things about the imminent destruction of the entire island—something I, along with everyone else, have the right to know about.”

  “I didn’t know about it,” Dash nearly shouted; “at least, not the way you two clearly do. Listen, Quinn. There’s only one way to do this, since you clearly have retained that stubborn inability to trust anything anyone says.”

  Quinn waited.

  “I’m standing in front of two seers. Between the two of you, there must be a way to ascertain whether someone is telling the truth. I need you to find that way. Because I’m going to tell you everything. And we don’t have time for you to believe I’m lying any more.”

  She knew his plan made sense. She wanted to get to the bottom of the truth. She wanted to be honest. She was so sick of all the lies. But in that moment, lying was necessary; the truth would expose Rory. “We’re not seers.”

  Dash rolled his eyes impatiently. “Call it what you like. You’ve been reading each other’s minds for days. You found a way to get past Savannah’s security. You must have a way to truth-tell—”

  “I think we can do it,” Rory said, glancing over at Quinn. “You look him in the eyes. Compel him. Make him tell the truth. I use my abilities to sense whether the compulsion is working. Then, together, we hear him out, and use our best judgment. It’s not perfect, but I think we’ll know. I think even if we can’t trust anyone else, we can trust our own instincts, our own abilities.”

  Quinn hesitated. It wasn’t a bad plan, but there was one problem. There was only one way for Quinn to compel Dash, and it was to be honest with him first.

  “I can’t,” she said, taking a step back.

  “Quinn,” Dash said, taking a step forward. “Thirty seconds of vulnerability, and you’ll know everything. We have to do this.”

  She knew he was right. She just hated it.

  “Fine. I have never hated and loved someone as much as you. I wanted to trust you so badly that I think I actually did. And then I watched you not only lie to me, but turn everyone who mattered to me against me, picking and choosing favorites that you would let in on your precious little secret, and it drove me slowly more and more mad with rage until I snapped. I went to go see what she was planning on my own. And then I decided I truly hated you, because whichever side you were on, you knew, and you did nothing, and that, more than anything, proved to me that you couldn’t be trusted at all.”

  He stared at her, devastated. Crushed.

  She knew it had worked.

  “Tell me the truth,” she compelled him.

  She could see before Rory said a word that she had him. His eyes were hers. She saw obedience, and she saw truth.

  “I have never lied to you,” he told her. “I never wanted to come to this island. I wanted to be with Charlotte. But Savannah told me to come here, and so I did. At that point, I was still obedient to her. I still trusted her.

  “I told you that Charlotte was killed by Crowley, and that was true. What I left out was that Savannah was in on it, too. I could see in her eyes the fear she felt whenever I would receive a letter from Charlotte—whenever I would try to help her. She kept warning me, telling me that if I kept communicating with the resistance, I would be the next one on Crowley’s list. I ignored her. I received a letter from Charlotte three days before she was killed, telling me that she was going to the US Embassy in Canada to try and get them to talk peace terms. That had to be how Crowley knew where to find her—how he had time to plan out the whole thing. Savannah read the letter and told him everything. She did it for my protection, but it didn’t matter. Not to me.”

  “As it shouldn’t have. But why keep this from me? Why tell me everything else, but not this?”

  “I’ll get to that. I promise.”

  She believed him, she decided, so she let him continue.

  “Once the resistance died on the mainland, I decided to start one here on the island. Not necessarily to break out of here, or to do something drastic, but for our own protection. I didn’t trust Savannah any more. I didn’t know exactly what her end game was, or Crowley’s. But I knew that she had it in her to kill. And that was enough for me to want nothing to do with her.

  “Little did I know, the Siloh resistance had already begun. Shortly after Charlotte’s murder, Charlie’s parents came to me. They told me that if I was truly ready to give up my mother, they would have me join them.”

  Charlie’s parents—Dr. Donovan and her wealthy husband—were the leaders of the resistance? She certainly hadn’t seen that one coming.

  “I knew they were the real deal,” he explained, “because they and Savannah had never gotten along. They came to Siloh with more money and power than she did—and, soon, more allies. Their roots moved here. Hers stayed out there. They were rivals from the beginning.

  “I couldn’t tell Savannah, of course. I had to convince her she could trust me. So I asked her to let me teach. The way she was having people teach, it was out of fear. The way the kids are still taught—telling people to hold back. I told her I wanted to teach them how to really use their abilities. For their own sakes.

  “She agreed, on one condition: she wanted me reporting back to her, keeping her posted on everyone’s abilities, whether we had any seers, that sort of thing. She wouldn’t tell me everything, but I inferred that she was reporting back to someone. Whether it was the UNCODA or Crowley, I didn’t know. But I knew she had to trust me, and I knew I couldn’t endanger my students. So I fed her lies about my students—lies grounded just enough in the truth that she believed them. I protected those students at all costs. And I became a leader in the resistance.”

  “And Reese?” Quinn asked. “Where does Reese fit into all of this?”

  “Reese has never been concerned with anyone but himself. I knew it all along, but the moment it was confirmed for me was when Ridley turned. We had all just recovered from the event—we hadn’t even moved to Siloh yet—and Reese wrote him off entirely. His best friend. Wouldn’t even look at him any more.”

  Quinn could hardly believe it; and yet, looking over at Rory, she could see that, to the best of their abilities, they both believed he was telling the truth.

  “It wasn’t just me and Charlie’s parents,” Dash said. “There were others. Adults, people you still don’t know. People they trusted. They let me invite people, too, but slowly. Every existing member of the resistance had to approve each new member. For anyone in our movement to leak anything back to Savannah… It would be over for us. We knew at that point what kind of power she had. She’d had people killed. And she was planning something bigger.

  “Ridley was my first recruit, and he was a tough one, but a valuable one. His position in security made things complicated, but also useful. He leaked information back to us quickly and truthfully—helped us gain intel that we hadn’t had before. They loved him. Then, Charlie’s parents wanted my opinion on Charlie and Pence. The two of them got together almost as soon as Pence came to Siloh, and Charlie’s parents trusted both of them implicitly. But they knew how teenagers could be, and they knew how Savannah and Reese could get to them—manipulate them. They asked me to watch them; talk to them. Determine whether they were right for the resistance. I knew within months that they were. They were strong-hearted and independent, and it didn’t hurt that Savannah distrusted Charlie’s parents so much, she wouldn’t even consider approaching their children. They were the first of the younger generation to join.”

  It made sense, she supposed. What Haley had told her about Savannah having come to her, but not Pence and Charlie, and for them to have warned Haley against telling anyone—they had probably already been in the resistance at that point.

  “For years, they were the only teenagers in the resistance,” Dash continued. “There were others I recommended heavily—Haley, in particular. But I wasn’t the only one trying to get to them. Reese and Savannah were, too. Every time one of them met with Reese or Savannah, red flags were raised to the resistance. Haley was just… too kind.
Some people mistook her kindness for weakness. As much as I believed her heart was in the right place, the others wouldn’t risk it. They knew Savannah had approached her, and they feared that if she joined the resistance, she might in a moment of weakness or intimidation reveal too much to Savannah.”

  Quinn didn’t typically have much faith in people, but even she knew Haley was tougher and smarter than that.

  “And then you came here,” he said. “You were the talk of the resistance, Quinn. Everyone wanted you, and yet everyone was afraid of you. They all thought you were both a powerful asset and a ticking time bomb.”

  Sounds about right, Quinn mused. Especially considering her latest stunt.

  “And you?” she asked him. “What did you think?”

  “At first, I wanted you nowhere near that group. I had seen all the havoc you’d wreaked on the real world. I thought you were reckless. I thought you were selfish. I thought you were giving the world justification for fearing us and hating us.”

  His words hurt, but they didn’t surprise her. She’d had her suspicions about why he had been so cold to her when he’d first met her, and she hadn’t been far off.

  “The world already hated us and feared us,” she pointed out. “If they didn’t, I would have led an entirely different life.”

  “I know. I was wrong.”

  She said nothing. But it helped.

  “I learned early on that there was more to you than I had assumed, but Reese had you in the palm of his hands so quickly,” he continued. “With his claws in you, none of us wanted to risk recruiting you. It was too dangerous.

  “And then I got to know you, and I saw your heart. I knew that you had the exact same motives that I did—even down to Crowley himself.”

  She shuddered at the sound of his name, even now. She could sense Rory’s breath held next to her, just as transfixed.

  “I tried to convince them,” he said. “I did. The closer I got to you, the harder it was to keep it from you. But every time I came close to convincing them, Reese would swoop in. It was all intentional, Quinn. I know it was. Reese and Savannah saw us getting close, and she sent him to intervene. To keep you away.”