Pretty Monster

by Somers, Jill

  She sighed. “I remember.”

  “Quinn, if it hadn’t been you, it would have been me. Or Haley, or Ridley, or any number of the many other people that evil man has hurt along the way. None of us could have known it wasn’t him. And none of us blame you.”

  She sighed, looking into those perfect eyes of his. A thought occurred to her as she scanned the bright, golden embers in his eyes: It didn’t overpower her any more. The fear. The distrust. The hatred.

  It wasn’t that she was a different person now. Everything she had been through before she came to Siloh had shaped who she was, and that wasn’t going anywhere. But Siloh had shaped who she became from that point forward. And that was someone who had control over that fear, that distrust, that hatred.

  Someone who could love.

  “I love you,” she said softly.

  He smiled. “I know.”

  • • •

  The next premonition was different than the others: it was completely unprovoked. It came to Quinn and Rory, simultaneously, in the middle of dinner. Quinn, who could only assume this was a sign of their abilities strengthening, didn’t have time to linger on it; the premonition was a big one.

  They were going to meet with the UNCODA at the United Nations headquarters in New York, she learned. In one week.

  She let the bitter irony of that full-circle geographical journey sink in as she delved deeper into the vision, Rory by her side.

  Crowley was there—that was the first thing she noticed. He was on the stand, speaking. His wrists were cuffed, but he looked clean, groomed—not like he had spent the last few weeks in prison, but rather, like the cuffs were all for show.

  Savannah was seated on the stage behind him, also in cuffs, either next in line to speak or already having spoken. Haley and Ridley on the opposite side of the stage. Neither of them were cuffed, but judging from the heavily armed guards on either side of them, they had their own version of cuffs.

  On one side of the auditorium were the leaders of the UNCODA—the United Nations Council of Deviant Affairs. The UN’s most powerful division.

  Quinn thought back to what he had said to her that day in his office. “Kill you? Six years ago, I probably would have. But things are different now. Regulations, limitations. Your own country might be okay with me killing you, but the UNCODA would never let me hear the end of it.”

  She knew better than to have much hope. They might be the only group powerful enough to keep Crowley’s madness in check, but they had still assisted in the international capture of deviants for years, turning blind eyes to the conditions of the prison they knew as Devil’s Island.

  Not that that’s such a bad thing, she reminded herself; if they had paid more attention, Siloh probably would have been turned into what Devil’s Island was supposed to be all along.

  On the other side of the room were the deviants. Not just one of them. Not just Charlie’s parents, not just Rory, not just Dash. All of them.

  They weren’t handcuffed either, she noticed. Like Haley and Ridley, they were surrounded by armed guards; she could see the same glowing vials of sedatives that had knocked her out in Crowley’s office. Still, thinking back to that day on the helicopter when she couldn’t break free of her handcuffs even at full strength, she decided she preferred guards over handcuffs.

  In the middle of the auditorium were the families. Another surprise, Quinn marveled, that civilians would be invited to a summit like this; then again, given the giant cameras in every corner of the room, Quinn assumed the entire movement had garnered so much pro-deviant press and distrust for the government, the public had insisted on the same live streaming that the deviants themselves had provided.

  She wasn’t sure how she knew, exactly, that they were family members. It wasn’t as if her own father was in the crowd. It had something to do with her channeling Rory’s feelings within the vision. She realized, as she watched two, young, brown-haired people that Rory was focusing on, that she had never asked Rory about her family. She had always assumed that the girl, who had been little more than an infant during the event, had lost her parents that night.

  Rory recognized them, though. Quinn could tell. And from the elation Quinn could feel swirling around the girl’s head, she was happy to see them.

  Quinn tried to push away the strange, territorial feeling that was creeping its way in, focusing instead on Crowley’s words. She knew that whatever he was going to say at this meeting was the key to this premonition.

  “…lie, after lie, after lie,” he was saying. “She manipulated me… She manipulated the people of Siloh… She manipulated her own sons.”

  Quinn realized, looking at the shocked and furious expression on Savannah’s face, that he wasn’t talking about Quinn, nor any of the deviants, but Savannah—his own partner. This was his strategy?

  It was strangely brilliant; the resistance had garnered too much attention from the outside world, too much support. Savannah was already the bad guy in their story. If she was the bad guy in Crowley’s, too…

  “Nuclear warfare was never my intent. The peace the people of Siloh enjoyed for so long—the goodness, the good health—that was all my doing. You all entrusted me with keeping the world protected from these people, but I knew the only way to do so was to keep these people happy. Savannah was supposed to be my outlet for that. Little did I know, she was stirring up a movement of her own—creating an army of people she trusted—planning on taking over the world with them. Plotting to kill those who refused to follow her.”

  “But were you not the one, Mr. Crowley,” asked the woman who was questioning him, a sharply-dressed, fast-talking woman with a British accent, “who came to us requesting permission to deploy the weapon? Were you not the one who deployed the weapon against our wishes after we denied your request?”

  Everyone in the audience stirred at that one, even the men behind Crowley who Quinn inferred were FBI and US government. This was interesting, she thought. The UNCODA had told Crowley not to nuke the island… And he had somehow convinced the U.S. government to let him, anyway?

  Wouldn’t be the first time the States had gone against the wishes of the United Nations, she supposed. But things were different now. The UNCODA funded the majority of the DCA’s expenses; the American government itself was nearly bankrupt. Why would they take such a risk? Was it possible they were in on it—that they wanted access to the deviant army Crowley was creating?

  “I did press on,” Crowley admitted, “for the sake of public safety. I was told when I was charged with the command of the Deviant Collection Agency that I was to use whatever means necessary to keep the people safe from these monsters. I believed that was what I was doing.”

  “A quick sidebar, if I may,” the questioner said. “Could the director of the FBI, Mr. Mark Weber, please step forward?”

  Crowley stepped to the side as another man stepped forward. From the look of him, he was just as slimy as Crowley himself.

  “Mr. Weber,” the questioner said. “Were you not aware, when Mr. Crowley came to you, that his request had already been denied by the UNCODA?”

  “I was aware. But the affairs of deviants are Mr. Crowley’s jurisdiction, not mine. When he came to me and told me that a coalition of deviants was planning on taking over the world, and that a nuclear attack was the only solution we had, I believed him. It was my mistake, director. But an understandable one, I think. How was I to know that the man we entrusted with deviant affairs would be so mistaken about the state of those affairs?”

  “Perhaps,” the questioner—director, Quinn corrected herself mentally; could this woman be the director of the UNCODA?—said bitterly, “in the case of nuclear warfare, we owe it to ourselves to do more than ‘take someone’s word for it.’”

  Crowley forced his way back to the podium, eyes hungry, desperate. “Please, director. It’s not his fault. It’s not mine. These creatures are poisonous—they find ways to get into your mind and change the way you think. The woman I h
ad entrusted to report the truth back to me, the woman who was to warn me if there was any risk of safety for the outside world—she manipulated me. She told me that there was a resistance forming that wanted to take over the world—and that was true—but she told me that those people were the ones she would leave behind. She promised me that those she was removing from the island—they were the good ones. The ones who didn’t want to hurt anyone. They were the ones we would send back to the island, once the attack was over. The rest, she told me, we had to destroy. For the sake of public safety.”

  Quinn shook her head. Now Crowley was trying to convince them that Savannah had some kind of mind control over him?

  “And you just… trusted her,” the director said. “Staked the lives of hundreds on that trust.”

  “I had no choice. She made me fall in love with her.”

  Savannah looked like she was going to scream; everyone on Quinn’s side of the audience looked like they were right there with her. But Crowley wasn’t finished.

  “I knew it would be hard for you all to believe. But none of you understand what it’s like when one of them tries to get inside your head—when they force you to love them. I ask you to call upon the people who followed Savannah. The group that has come to be known as the alliance. Ask them. Ask them what she promised them. Ask them whether they intended to take over the world. Ask them whether or not I knew about it.”

  And there, Quinn realized, was the sick, incredible genius of it all. Crowley had taken the same group of people he had been able to manipulate before, through Savannah, and turned them against her. He knew they were weak. He knew he could control them.

  He was going to get off the hook.

  She wasn’t going to let him.

  • • •

  They had a handful of other premonitions after that—shorter ones. Visions of Crowley walking out a free man, Savannah being imprisoned, the alliance being sent back into exile, the resistance being set free. It was something, she supposed as she watched her friends board airplanes and go on their ways. Their movement had still been enough to convince the world that they were no threat—the majority of them, at least.

  But as she continued to watch, she realized that it wouldn’t be enough for Crowley. He would keep using their weaknesses to his advantage. He would set them up. Mount them as threats again. Make the world fear them. Send them all back to Siloh, one by one. Turn it into a prison again.

  It wasn’t enough, she decided as she came out of the premonition. Their initial freedom wasn’t enough.

  They were going to have to stop Crowley.

  • • •

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I almost feel bad for my mother.”

  They were gathered in Dash’s room, the same old group it had been so many weeks before—Haley, Ridley, Dash, Quinn, Trent, Pence, and Charlie—along with one new recruit—Angel. For the life of her, Quinn couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t been inviting her and Drax to these things all along. Both of them had more than proven themselves in that last battle—one with his own life.

  She might still have a love-hate relationship with Angel, but she had come to admire her nonetheless.

  “Here’s the good news,” Charlie said. “All of those people Crowley’s planning on convincing to work for him again—they’re in our basement right now. And he’s not. He’s going to talk to them somewhere between now and that meeting—which means we have the chance to get to them first.”

  Quinn grimaced. “I have nothing to say to those people. And as we already know, we can’t trust them. What good would it do talking to them?”

  “You could compel them,” Angel suggested. “Make them say whatever we want at the summit. No matter how convincing Crowley is, they’d be forced to obey you.”

  “No,” Quinn said, shaking her head. “It would be clear that they were being compelled. They wouldn’t be fluent—wouldn’t make sound and logical sense when they were called to the stands. My compulsion isn’t that specific. I can’t control every word they utter, days in advance.”

  “Besides the fact,” Dash added pointedly, “that it would be wrong.”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said, grinning slightly at him. “That, too.”

  Angel rolled her eyes. “Fine. What, then? We threaten them? Scare them? Seems to be the only thing that works with them, doesn’t it?”

  “Fear, yes,” Trent said. “But we won’t need to threaten anyone. We just need to bend the truth a little. They all know Quinn has premonitions, right? So, we tell them we’ve seen what Crowley will ask them to do—and where it lands them. And that aspect of it, we embellish a bit.”

  “Where does it land them?” Pence asked him. “In our version of the truth.”

  “Wherever we want. Maybe the people at the summit don’t believe them, and they’re imprisoned for lying. Maybe they’re killed for treason. Maybe—”

  “Crowley kills them anyway,” Quinn interrupted. “Despite them doing exactly as he asked. It might not be what really happens, but it’s happened before. Hell, it’s what he’s doing to Savannah now. Anyone with half a brain would believe it.”

  “What’s our counter-offer?” Ridley asked the group. “Do as Crowley asks, get killed. Tell the truth, as we ask, and…?”

  “What, ‘live’ isn’t enough?” Angel asked sourly.

  “We let them return to the island,” Rory said. “Which is what happened in the vision, anyway, so it’s probably bound to happen in real life. In both sides of the story, they were still the bad guys. And the leaders of the summit still let them return to the island. It may have been an exile, but it was better than an execution.”

  Quinn nodded. “It’s the closest thing we can give them to an honest promise. But if they do return to the island—free—it’s going to have to be different than it was. We’re going to have to talk to them. Really talk to them. Make sure that they’re not going to betray us again.”

  Ridley nodded. “We’ll need to start off with security measures, if they’re going to join us here. Guard shifts. Monitoring devices. We’ll phase it out, of course… I think the majority of them are good people who just need people like Crowley and Savannah to leave them be. But we should still be careful.”

  “So, it’s settled,” Dash said. “Now, who volunteers to have this conversation with them?”

  • • •

  Quinn didn’t want to go anywhere near the dungeons again. She didn’t think she was the best person to convince these people to ignore Crowley. Without her compulsion, she had never been all that compelling.

  But there was one person she wanted to speak to—one person she should never have given up on in the first place.

  Shade.

  Trent and Charlie came with her. They would speak to the others—Tommy, in particular, who neither Quinn nor Angel trusted themselves around. Trent, Quinn noticed, seemed to have overcome all of his fears and doubts since returning to Siloh; he was full of good ideas to help the cause.

  Trent and Charlie were both in agreement not to let any members of the alliance out of their cells, but Quinn decided to break that rule. It didn’t feel right, reasoning with Shade when he was behind bars. So she headed for his cell, key in hand, and unlocked it. Just like that.

  He stared at the open cell door, eyes wide. Confused.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” she said to him. “Not yet. I just want to show you that I’m not your enemy. That we need to talk.”

  Shade lifted a hand, pushing the door open carefully. He took one step, then another, until he was in the hallway with her.

  “I know you’re not my enemy,” he finally said. “You told Trent not to hurt me.”

  She nodded. Good choice, past Quinn. “Do you want to go somewhere? The dining hall, maybe? Your old room?”

  He shook his head. “I know that I deserve to be down here. Why don’t you just tell me what you want to know?”

  She bit her lip, thinking back on her own words to her friends when s
he had refused to leave that place. It was strange, how much she suddenly felt she had in common with Shade.

  “There’s going to be a summit,” she told him. “Sort of like a trial. To see what happens to all of us. And before that summit, Crowley’s going to try to tell you more lies. He’s going to try to convince you to turn against Savannah.”

  “I know.”

  Her eyes widened. How could he possibly know that?

  “I knew when you killed him,” he explained, “and he turned into Izzo. Well, I guess I knew before that. Years and years. He did a lot of bad things. But Izzo was different. She was good… She was just lost. She was so scared. She came to him because she didn’t want to die, and he killed her.”

  Quinn could barely keep up with him. She had never heard him speak so much at one time. Everything he was saying about Izzo made sense. But what did he mean by ‘years and years?’

  “Shade… how long have you been working for Crowley?”

  “He found me after the event. He wanted children whose parents died in the event… he only found a few of us, and I was the strongest.”

  She watched him, frozen.

  “He made me think that he loved me. For a year, I thought I was so lucky. My own parents never knew how to talk to me. I was sad that they were dead, but… Mr. Crowley was different. He made me feel like I was a part of something. Not a family but… something else. Something special.

  “Then, when the resistance formed… He made me hate them. Told me that they were going to get everyone like me killed. And when he felt like I hated them enough, he sent me to them. Told me to join them, only… to report back to him.”

  Quinn could hardly believe it. Shade would have been the same age Quinn had been—ten, eleven at the most, at this point. She had never even considered joining the resistance back then; she had been struggling just to stay alive.

  “Remember the woman that they called Blackout?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “It wasn’t her that made the blackouts. She took me under her wing, you see. Always kept me close so that I wouldn’t get hurt. It was me who caused the blackouts. They just assumed it was her.”