Esther looks at me sympathetically. “Corin and Rahn are still out looking. They could’ve even found it by now and be on the way back with it.” She glances over to where Three is lighting a fire.
I know she’s only saying it to reassure me. They won’t have found it. No. Somebody stole it from me. Somebody wants me trapped in the Dream Land. And that someone has to be one of us.
Three? No. He wouldn’t. He’s my brother. Esther? I shake my head. She’s my friend. Corin? No. He wouldn’t. Rahn? As much as I don’t like the man, I know he puts the welfare of the whole of his group first and foremost, and he wouldn’t do that. Not even to me.
That only leaves Marouska. I look across at her. She smiles back at me as she pulls the bones out of some meat. I don’t know what to think. She saw me take the augmenter. She probably hates me, hates how weak I am. Could this be some sort of revenge? A way for her to get rid of me without getting blood on her hands?
I try to breathe, willing the memory of the Calmness to take over my mind… Minutes later, it’s all I can think about. I want to be free of all these worries, all this danger. Would it be so bad to take some now, in this situation? I’m going to get trapped in the Dream Land tonight—or if not tonight, tomorrow night, or the next—anyway. Would it be so bad just to have an evening where I didn’t feel anxious, worried, nervous?
The vial’s in my pocket. I only have to reach for it.
No. I can’t. I won’t. Not in front of them. Too risky.
I clutch my hands to me. My cold fingers shake. Echoes of pain run through my knuckles. My throat feels raw, my eyes sting. I slap my hands onto my knees, trying to still them, but it’s impossible.
It is too risky, isn’t it?
Far too risky, Seven, don’t do it. Remember what happened before. Marouska found out. She won’t cover for you again. Everyone will know.
But you’re going to leave anyway. Do it. It won’t matter. And you’ll feel better.
I jump to my feet.
“Seven?” Esther also stands up.
“Uh, I want to check the lake again,” I mumble. My hands feel clammy, and they’re still shaking.
Esther nods. “I’ll come with you.”
“No,” I say, then I soften my tone. “I’ll be really quick. There’s no point. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Then I’m running as fast as I can, away from them all. I don’t even make it as far as the lake. It’s too far away, anyway—a ridiculous goal. I dive for the thick cover of the nearest trees, and I crumple to the woodland floor, tears streaking my face.
I pull the vial from my pocket, my fingernails ripping the fabric. I crawl forward and lean against an acacia trunk. I hold onto the vial as I cry. The blue liquid winks at me. My heart leaps. My breath catches in my throat as I unscrew the lid.
The liquid is just as sweet and delicious as I remembered. It courses through me, driving away the evil, protecting me, helping me.
That’s when I know it: I can never truly be Untamed again. I have to go back to the Enhanced Ones. I can’t keep stalling. It’s lesson four after all: Never let yourself be Enhanced. Once it’s done, there’s no going back. It’s true. I can’t go back to being Untamed. Everyone knows no one can ever be the same after tasting the augmenters. I belong with the Enhanced now. Trying to pretend I don’t is futile. When I’ve tasted the sweetness of sugar, how can I go back to living on salt?
I breathe deeply, and I gulp some more of the augmenter. I need to leave now, even without my pendant. The Enhanced will help me; they must know other ways to stop me becoming trapped in the Dream Land. I’ll tell them—I’ll tell Three and Corin and Esther and Rahn and Marouska that I need to go. I can’t wait until another raid, I have to go now. I can’t live like this any longer, in this perpetual state of danger. Sometimes we need to sacrifice something for safety. Rahn’s said it enough times: sacrifice yourself.
If I go, it will help them all. I can’t hide what I am anymore—the eye-mirrors will prove it. I can’t keep lying to them. They’re free to live as they want. The Enhanced want me. Raleigh wants me. As soon as I’m gone, the Untamed will have better chances of survival.
Except if the Enhanced have you, they’ll have all the Untamed.
My throat tightens. Light swirls in front of me, tiny crystals forming into a solid shape, like Three’s old kaleidoscope. I blink, adrenaline racing around my body, and—
“Mum?”
Her face, inches from mine. Long black lashes grace her cheek as she blinks hurt from her eyes.
“Mum?” My voice gets louder, and the sweetness from the Calmness clings to my teeth like a limp bit of stale food I can’t swallow, no matter how hard I try.
I reach toward her. My fingers shake. She shimmers.
“What have you done?” Her eyes bore into mine, like daggers, and my skin flushes. Razors dive across my neck, then tunnel into my throat, gauging out the flesh until I’m raw. “Seven, my child, look at what you’ve done. After everything I told you. Do my words mean nothing?”
“But, you—”
“I—”
She’s gone.
What have you done?
I look down at the vial in my hand. The dregs are still left, and they swirl as I tip the glass vial from side to side.
“I’m joining, you, Mum,” I whisper.
But I can’t think properly. I scratch the side of my face, hoping my nails have drawn blood. I grab at the back of my neck. I can feel my heart rate rising. This isn’t right. I should feel calm now.
There’s still some of the augmenter left. The pale blue liquid smiles, shimmers. I raise it to my mouth, again. My breath comes in huge bleeding gulps.
“Sev? What the hell are you doing? No!”
Startled, I look up to see Corin. My grip on the tiny glass bottle slackens. He lunges toward me. I scrabble backward, but the tree’s in the way, there’s nowhere to go. Then he’s on me. The back of my head whacks against the tree trunk. One of his hands forces my shoulder back as the other seizes the glass vial.
“No!” I cry. “No! Please!” My fingers clench around the augmenter.
Corin snarls something at me, but doesn’t let go. His knee crashes into mine, and I try to throw his weight off me, but I can’t. He’s just there, inches from me. His eyes are—
Movement. In his eyes. Reflection. Mirror. My mirror eyes, reflected in his dark pupils.
He swears at me.
I freeze. He pulls the vial from me, throws it out of sight. The sound of glass smashing fills my ears.
For a few seconds, I can’t move. I can’t look at anything else but his eyes. They are full of hatred, so dark, so dangerous. They’re so close to mine, inches away as he leans over me. One of his hands is still on my shoulder, and our bodies touch in several places.
Then he stands up. The look of scorn on his face is enough to make me wish I hadn’t been born. Or that I hadn’t been caught.
It was inevitable that I’d find out.
“Anyway,” Corin says, his tone full of disgust, “I came to give you this. Not that you deserve it.”
He pulls something out of his pocket and hands it to me. My mother’s pendant.
“Don’t thank me,” he says. Then he walks away.
“You were spying on my sister?” Three growls. Esther’s hand is on his shoulder, and it’s probably the only thing stopping my brother from ripping Corin to pieces. “You watched my sister, then you stole her pendant. Then you tried to be the knight in shining armor, giving it back to her.”
“I didn’t steal it from her,” Corin says, tight-lipped.
The six of us are sitting around the fire Three built. None of them look at me, and no one is sitting close to me. Marouska hasn’t offered me any of her potion to hide the eye-mirrors, but I can’t exactly bring that up without them all finding out about before. I gulp.
My mother’s words ring in my ears: What have you done? Seven, my child, look at what you’ve done. After everything I told you.
Do my words mean nothing?
“But you were still spying on her?”
Corin freezes for a second, mouth open, then exchanges a glance with Rahn. “No,” Corin says a few minutes later. “I wasn’t. I’m not interested in her. I’ve already said what I think of her—”
“Yes, we all know what you think, and you need to get off your mountain,” Three says. Esther’s hand slips from his shoulder, and he steps closer to Corin. “My sister is not a little girl. She’s a woman. You’d do well to remember that, and give her respect, else I’ll—”
“Else you’ll what?” Corin asks, his arms folded. He raises his eyebrows and smirks. “Exactly. It’s all just—”
Three punches him in the face.
“Three!”
Rahn lunges forward and tackles Three to the ground. Esther races to Corin, who clamps his hands over his bloody nose. He curses, then gives me and Three dirty looks.
“Does no one care that she is Enhanced?” Corin shouts, throwing his arms in the air. He turns on Three. “Your sister’s one of them. Yet you’re punching me? Can you really not see Seven for what she is? Look at her! Look at her eyes.”
“It’s not her fault,” Three says, but doesn’t look at me.
“Not her fault?” Corin shouts, then laughs sarcastically. “So someone forced her to drink that, did they? It wasn’t of her own free will?” He laughs louder, and the shadows that the flames cast over his face make him look even more dangerous.
“Everyone knows it’s hard for the Enhanced to stop using augmenters,” Esther says, but she’s not looking at me either. “That’s why our numbers are falling…and it wasn’t Seven’s fault the first time, she didn’t choose it the first time, they captured her—”
Corin snorts loudly. “Maybe I should’ve left her there then. She’s one of them. Not one of us. No Untamed are going to be interested in her. Least of all me.”
“Corin!” Esther exclaims. “That’s completely unfair. She’s only drank some once! What the hell’s wrong with you?”
I try to cover my face with my hands, but they’re shaking, and the tears won’t stop. I can still feel their hands on me, when they searched me, expecting to find more augmenters.
Corin snorts. “Wrong with me? Why, nothing! I’m not the one with mirror eyes. I’m not the one going against all that we fight for.”
Rahn shakes his head. “Corin, that’s enough.”
Corin looks like he’s going to say something else, but then he presses his lips firmly together.
Marouska gets up slowly. “We should talk about this tomorrow. Sleep on it,” she says. “It’ll look better in the morning.” She walks over toward the car, and then Rahn and Esther follow her.
Corin still hasn’t moved, other than shifting his weight for a few minutes to get a cigarette and lighter out his pocket.
“Seven?” Three prompts. He raises his eyebrows as he looks at me. But his voice hasn’t got the usual warmth in it.
“In a minute,” I say. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
After shooting deadly looks at Corin, Three leaves.
“Corin,” I say.
He lights a cigarette carefully, then inhales from it deeply.
“Corin?”
When he doesn’t reply, I get up and walk over to him. I tap him on the shoulder. He jumps at my touch. But he doesn’t pull away. He turns to look at me, his whole body seething with anger. I nearly take a step back. But I don’t. Close up, his bloodied nose looks even worse.
“I didn’t take your pendant,” he says, his voice flat. “And I wasn’t spying on you.”
He looks me dead in the eyes, and I see the revulsion cross over his face. I don’t want Corin to abandon me.
I start to turn away. “Sorry.”
“It was Rahn,” Corin says. He gets up and faces me, full on. There’s something about his stance that makes me think of a warrior.
I freeze. Alarm filters through me. “Rahn was spying on me?”
“No. Well, no,” Corin mutters, shaking his head. He smells of cigarette smoke. “He wasn’t… Look, I just found the necklace—your pendant—in his jacket. I don’t know why he took it. Probably an accident.” He moves to turn away, but I stop him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice quiet. I bow my head slightly.
He shrugs. “You’re pathetic, Sev. You’re addicted to that stuff. You’re trying to hide it from us, pretend that you’re going to be different to all the others we’ve rescued before, but at the first sign of danger, worry—whatever it is—you just can’t help yourself. It’s controlling you, and you’re letting it. I’ve seen how you’ve been struggling, and I thought that you were winning. But you’re not.” He shakes his head. “The Enhanced are winning. I said I’d protect you from them, but I can’t protect you from yourself as well.” He shakes his head at me slowly. Then he turns away.
I gulp once or twice, and then, with a huge sob, I let the tears fall, trickling down my smoldering skin.
Rahn took my pendant.
From the back seat, I watch him. Why would he want me trapped in the Dream Land? Does he really want me dead? Or did he do it because he knew I had an augmenter and I’d try to convert myself, and that would give him proof of who I am—and a valid reason to throw me out of his group?
I’ve got the pendant back on now, but no one—least of all Rahn—has commented on it. I cry silently and turn away so no one can see me. They won’t let me stay with them now. Just the thought of not seeing them—any of them—again makes my heart feel like it’s breaking. Even if it was what I wanted before. Even if I will be with the Enhanced. Even if I will be safe.
No one speaks for the next hour or so, except for Rahn and Marouska, in the front. They make small talk about how the dog probably has fleas and then what their favorite type of food is.
We stop for the night by a small stream. Rahn, Corin, and Three put up a sort of tent for themselves—surprisingly, Rahn says he will share the same tent as the other two—leaving Esther, Marouska, and me in the car. Neither of them talks to me.
They’re angry, betrayed by me. Taking that Calmness, it wasn’t worth it. It could never be worth it.
I catch Esther looking at me out of the corner of my eye, but as soon as I make eye contact, she turns away from me.
That night, I am almost fearful of sleeping. Surely I’ll be called into the Dream Land. But I’m not. In the small time that I actually manage to sleep, I’m not taken anywhere. Staring out at the dusky sky, in the early hours of the morning, I know I’ve ruined everything. Of course I’m not going to be summoned into the Dream Land… Why would they warn me of the Enhanced coming after us, when to everyone else I look just like one of those robots? I’ve betrayed everyone.
I shut my eyes and wonder if the mirrors have completely gone. I hope they have, I really do. I don’t want the others to have a physical reminder of what I’ve done. But they’ll remember it. There’s no way any of us can forget this.
The next time we stop is just after midday; Three reckoned the car was overheating again, so Rahn ordered us to stop. We’re sitting outside—although no one’s immediately next to me—and Marouska and Three are sorting out some food.
“Too many flies here,” Corin says, batting away some mosquitoes.
“Well move then,” Rahn snaps. He’s not in a good mood today, that’s obvious.
To my surprise, Corin moves and sits fairly near me, the nearest out of all the others. I feel a spark of hope.
“Your eyes are back to normal,” is all that he says as he stretches out on the grass.
I don’t know what to think. I should be pleased he even spoke to me—and that he’s sitting reasonably close to me. But I’m not. I glance over at Corin as subtly as I can. What is he doing? Why sit by me when he definitely hates me?
You’re pathetic, Sev. You’re addicted to that stuff.
I choke back tears.
A few moments later, Marouska hands out wood
en bowls of soup. I smile at her as she gives me mine, but she doesn’t return the gesture. I try not to let it upset me, and I look down at my soup. I have a different flavor to everyone else, if the color’s anything to go by. I take a sip of the soup. It’s hot and spicy, a strange aftertaste. I have a bigger mouthful of it. I can’t place the flavor, but I’m not sure I like it.
No. I definitely don’t.
I look across at the slight hills ahead of us. They’re the yellowest hills I’ve ever seen, and I can’t work out what’s growing on them. To the right, is an oddly shaped tor. It’s perfectly square, leading high up into the sky, and then it just stops, as if one of the Gods or Goddesses has cut the top off.
I look around at the rest of my group. Esther and Three are over to the left, and Marouska and Rahn are nearest to the car. We’re all kind of sitting in pairs.
I look across at Corin, and he nods at me. Maybe he’s realized it too, and now he’s embarrassed that he’s sitting with me. I can smell the smoke that clings to him, even from here. He turns his head and looks toward where Esther and Three sit together. They’re both laughing; I feel uncomfortable watching, like an unwanted observer. My brother and Esther are sitting close together—really close—and the way they’re looking at each other….
“Something’s going on between them.” Corin doesn’t sound happy. “She’s been acting strangely recently. Very strangely.” He looks at me. “Warn your brother away from her. Or I will.”
When I don’t say anything, or do anything, he says my name very loudly.
“What, now?” I stir my soup.
“Yes. Or I’ll do it.”
There’s something about his voice that says it would definitely be better if I did it, not him. So, I get up and walk toward my brother and Esther. My hands shake and I clench them together in front of my churning stomach.
My brother looks up at me, shading his face with one hand. His posture is relaxed; he looks comfortable. He nods at me. “Seven.”
“Corin isn’t happy with how close you’re sitting to Esther.” It sounds pathetic.
Untamed Series, #1 Page 25