by Logan Keys
“Oh,” Layla says, “But you must! It’s yours. We can’t um---anyway, we’d be in trouble trying to trade or spend it. And it’s a family heirloom passed down for generations. We’d really love for you to have it.”
Hearing that, I put it back inside the box carefully. “No. No way.”
Layla rushes forward and stops my hands. “Please,” she says, earnest.
“But, why?”
She smiles, and tears pop out of her eyelids. “Crystal, you went in after my Jared---Goodman, I mean. You saved his life. When you did that brave thing, I was… I was pregnant with Elsa. They---I know they would have made him one of those monsters if you hadn’t done what you did. I know what you’ve done for all of the Skulls. You must accept this gift. It’s only a small token compared to the countless people you’ve saved. Don’t you understand?” Tears flow unchecked down her face. “Without you, Elsa and I would have been so lost.”
I sit, dumbfounded. I search her gaze then Goodman’s.
He laughs, looks away, and wipes his eyes.
Layla nods at me. “They make the guards come back in search of others who disobey---their own families. The Authority would have taken Elsa from me and imprisoned me! The children go to the island.” She protectively covers her stomach as if Elsa was still in there needing her mother to stop the monsters from taking her.
I feel my face heat. I’m not used to this.
“Please,” Layla says. “Keep it.”
“Okay,” I say.
Elsa runs up to me with a piece of paper. “An older boy at school, he drew a picture of you. He didn’t believe me when I said I knew you. Don’t worry, his father is a Skull, so he already knows not to say anything.”
She shows me an ink blotted but realistic drawing of the Skulls. All of their faces are covered except mine. Or what is a version of me.
I take the drawing and frown. I---a girl stands before them, legs spread wide, hand on hip, dark eyebrow raised in a sardonic arch, and chin stuck out in defiance. Her hair is loose though, and my hand strays to my braid. Through the black strands on the page a strange wind seems to be blowing, pushing it behind her…. like a cape.
“This is me?” I ask in a small voice.
“Yes. I told him she doesn’t look like you but he don’t know what you look like… I think she’s pretty, but you’re prettier.”
She is pretty. I want to keep it so bad. This image of me looking heroic. She has… I dunno spirit or something. Her eyes are fierce. I wish I looked like her with all my heart.
“It’s for you,” she says when I try to give it back.
“No, sweetie, here.”
She crosses her arms and shakes her head. “He said he wanted you to have it. If I was telling the truth that is.”
I clutch the paper like a lifeline. “I, uh…don’t know what to say.”
Goodman laughs. “That’s a first.”
Dinner’s done so I rise and make an excuse to leave. Like I have some place to be.
Goodman frowns.
“I need a minute, is all,” I whisper when Layla’s not there, and he nods and lets me out the back door.
I stride away from the Goodman’s, take a deep breath and fold up the paper, placing it into my pocket. The familiar sight and sounds of section… This is home to me, a street I know as well as my own face.
If you live here, you get the least amount of rations. Section has slimmed down though; half the places seem empty.
I put on a jacket with a high collar, and I tuck my head way down, hoping no one recognizes me.
When I hit the corner, I see what I least hope to. Stepping backward, I slide as inconspicuously as possible, back against the wall.
The guards are here.
A voice catches on the breeze to me, frantic, upset. The same high pitched and fearful sound that always coincides with a Guard visit.
“We don’t have anything. What do you want with us?” the father is demanding.
I grit my teeth and creep up to the corner, peeking around the side.
They start dragging them out of the house, securing the family, hands behind their backs.
“Please. She’s just a child!”
They take the bewildered young thing and snap her into zip ties as well.
I pull away and close my eyes. Heart thundering in my ears, I talk myself down. Like a gut punch, someone screams. “Don’t do it,” I say to myself, even as my eyes open and I move to see around the corner once again.
A young voice cries out in pain.
“No,” I say to the stupid person already turning the corner.
Me.
The person rushing toward the black helmets, like I have no control of her. I approach so swiftly no one has any time to react.
My reflection in the shiny mirrors of the Guard’s helmet visors is surprising.
I’m her. The girl from the drawn image folded in my pocket.
I see it now.
I’m as fierce as she is, because I have to be.
Now that I’m here, moving between them and the victims they chose for today, I’ve never been more certain about anything in my life. They will take this family to be purged over my dead body.
Chapter 39
Crystal
I grab the nearest guard. He’s light as a feather to my adrenaline pumped, purged body. I’m as strong as three of them since most guards only do one purging to become a mindless drone. I took it three times, more than anyone else, and still, I am me.
But, I’m not as much me as I used to be. I’m a vessel for the purging.
I live a million lifetimes in the split second before I grab the first enemy by his collar, and I haul him over my head and throw him into the rest of the monsters.
Versions of myself fan out before me like broken glass. Choices I make---have made. They all do certain things. They all love Jeremy. They all love Anthem. But they don’t all choose this life and give up even a dinner table like Layla has. They don’t all become a cartoon on a piece of paper.
Many of them are hiding inside a house in section, with their family. Several have stayed back with my family back on the north side. Most of them are the Crystal who can shatter like this glass. She’s my downfall. She’s my distraction.
I can’t be her.
I won’t.
Because this version of me, this scar faced hero, she’s going to save someone or die trying. And I know I’m going to lose hard, and soon, maybe today.
The next guard takes the brunt of my explosive anatomy. I crack him practically down the middle.
The third, I break his neck in a swift twist, and without breathing even between, I’m bashing another against a wall.
Three down so fast, it couldn’t have been more than a second each if not less.
The family is staring at me but I don’t pause. I march over, cut their binds, and I hand them their bags and I tell them, “Run!”
They obey me, and as I knew, more guards have already arrived. At the end of this alleyway, they wait, five wide across and ten deep.
I spin toward the street and almost run into Goodman. He’s gaping at me, at the guards. His face is uncovered. He pales with the realization of what is occurring.
I put a hand on his arm. “Go,” I say and he glares at me, incredulous. “Go,” I repeat. “They can’t take you, I mean, if they do… Layla… but they can take me.”
He glances at my hand on his arm and shrugs me off. “No, Crystal. No.”
“Yes.” I take off my jacket. “Get this to Jeremy.” The ruby and the paper are inside. “He has to know I didn’t leave him and we need him. Okay? Can I trust you to understand that? If they take you, they’ll go after your family. And he’ll never know what happened to me.”
I try to make it sound enough like a mission that he’ll listen to me. Goodman hesitates.
“For Elsa,” I say, knowing it’s a cheap shot, but it works like a charm.
He nods. Takes the jacket. Then he gives me a look tha
t weakens my own resolve, but I say, “I’ll be fine.”
He opens his mouth and I slice my hand through the air. “Eyes up.”
Goodman shakes his head but says, “Keep alert.” Together we say, “And stand your ground.”
Goodman gives me a salute, and his crooked smile is sad. But with my chin jerk toward the exit, he dutifully listens, and takes off.
More resolute, I turn to face the guards.
“All right, fellas.” I crack my knuckle. “I’m gonna take as many of you with me as I can.”
The first wave attacks, and I flatten them all. Each one. In a blur. I just mow them down.
The next is clearer, as I break ribs through their padded outfits, legs, necks. The crunch of bone grounds me, makes me thirst for retribution.
I get a little intense fighting hand to hand. It’s been so long. The rush makes me laugh out loud as the third wave falls prey to my roundhouse kicks, boots to face, helmets knocked clear of a few heads, bouncing amidst the alleyway.
And the purge in all its glory comes spilling out from inside. Their identity revealed, pale and pockmarked from lack of sun. They’re as ugly as zombies.
My foot lands on a throat and I grind it into the ground until he stops moving. I face the fourth… or is this the fifth? Wave of them.
But more have arrived.
I fight valiantly if I might say so myself. But there are just too many.
The rest finally subdue me.
They dog-pile on me, so many I lose count, just to bring me down.
As I go to my knees, I mutter to myself, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
This is what I’m made for. And while it scares the hell out of me, facing my fourth and no doubt last purge, they all got away. Goodman, that family, all of them.
As they cart me off, binds firmly in place, triple, quadruple the number of ties needed for a normal human, and around my legs too, I look up at the sky and smile.
Chapter 40
Liza
“I need you to wake up. Don’t go back to sleep. Or whatever it’s called. Come on. Get up, Liza. You can do it.” Phillip’s voice is soft but urgent.
“Where am I?”
“We’ve traveled some ways, is it really you this time?” He seems as afraid that I’m not real as I am that he’s not either.
I nod, but my head feels fuzzy. “Phillip?” I ask when it grows quiet again.
I can’t see him, but this is the first I’ve heard his voice in so-so long. “Phillip?”
“I’m here. Try to fight through the fog. Can you see me?”
I shake my head. I open my eyes but see my same cell on Bodega Island. The same fake reality Cory’s had me in since leaving LA.
“Slap me,” I say.
“What?”
I’m fading away from Phillip. Going back to my prison. “Slap me. Hard! Do it now!”
My head moves to the side, and I hear the slap, but barely feel it. “Again!” I demand.
“Liza,” Phillip says with doubt.
“Do it. Please! I can’t stay here another second!”
This time I feel it. I gasp and touch my cheek. And feel myself touching my cheek.
I blink and it’s like the fog has lifted. For the first time in what seems like an eternity, I see. Phillip is crouched down. I’m sitting on the ground near a road. “Where are we?” I gasp.
“Ummm, I’d rather not say. It might freak you out. It’s been a while.”
I rub my cheek, the spot burning now with pain. But I love that sensation. I can feel, at least.
“Where is he?” I demand.
“He’s asleep, back in camp. Sometimes, if he sleeps deeply enough, you wander. And if you wander, I follow you and try to get you to wake.”
I rise to my feet. Phillip steadies me.
“I’ve just been following him along like a zombie all this time?” I ask, marveling at how insane that sounds.
“Yeah, pretty much.” Phillip’s gray eyes are sad. Sad for me.
“Could we run? Now, I mean? You said he’s asleep.”
Phillip shakes his head, dark hair coming loose from its tie. I stare at it, it’s at least an inch longer than last time I saw him. My stomach hurts at the thought of so much time passing.
Phillip says, “I tried to lead you away before. It won’t work. I’m not sure what he’s done, but you panic, and you sort of fade away.”
I gape at him. “He’s probably instilled some sort of hypnosis.”
“Maybe. Yeah. That makes sense. You act like there’s something going to get you or maybe already has.”
“We could kill him.”
Phillip sighs. “I would have already done that. The first time he dared to sleep, I was poised, the Skulls and I were ready. But he’s not as stupid as he looks. Not long after we left LA, he sent Leo and the child ahead of us to Anthem. If Cory doesn’t arrive safely and well, Leo’s been instructed----hypnotized to kill the kid.”
“What?” I ask in horror. “Do you think he would? Do you think that could actually work?”
“I’ve thought about it and honestly, I’ve wanted to just kill him and hope for the best, but every time I do, I picture some poor kid being murdered because of this bastard, and I just can’t. He’s smarter than he is creepy.”
I nod my head, my shoulders slumping in defeat.
“But hey, this is the first time you’ve been awake since we left LA and I think that’s progress.”
Phillip sits down on the road, straight in the middle. It’s funny, even without traffic, I still feel safer on the side.
I stay standing and I march down the road a ways, testing my constraints.
He’s right, I can feel it happening. My skin itches, my eyes go blind, and I’m half running back to where Phillip is to keep from ending up inside my fake Bodega prison.
“It’s like a leash!” I cry, tears building behind my eyes. “I can’t go back, Phillip. To that place. I just can’t do it anymore. I’m falling apart inside. We have to do something. Please. You have to help me.”
Phillip is at my side guiding me to the roadside. His face is filled with worry. He sits me on a log. “Here, put your head between your legs.”
“Whuh…? Why?” and then the world shrinks to a fuzzy little dot and I do as he says before I pass out. I’m panicking, my nails digging holes into my hands. Anxiety unfurls to such an extent that I’m shaking, my heart thundering in my ears.
I give up the fight, and I lean over to dry heave above the cracked asphalt. Tears pour down my face. “I can’t go back,” I whisper again and again. “I won’t. I’d rather die.”
Phillip sits quietly, his hand on my shoulder.
Finally, once I’ve cried myself out, I sit up and look deep into his wolf-like eyes. “Why are you helping me?”
He gives a soft laugh and pushes my hair behind an ear. “I guess you could say we are like brother and sister. I’ve never met you, but he said you were special and now I believe it.”
“He? You mean the doctor.”
Phillip nods. “We have more in common than you know, Liza.”
“We do?” I frown. “Were you on the island? Were you sick?”
“Long ago. When it was first being built. I was dying. I’d given up. I had the worst kind of cancer. The super cancer. The doctor fixed me. Just like he fixed you.”
“We were made the same way.”
Phillip smiles tightly. “Yes. The only two. The doctor sent me a message, you know? About you. He told me he’d lost patient after patient trying to make someone special like me. He was done trying. He wrote to me and asked me why I thought I had lived when so many couldn’t. I wrote him back that he needed to choose someone who was giving up. Someone who embraced death. Perhaps that’s what it took and not the other way around. My mother had told me long ago that death was just another place to go. The way we arrive here, we will arrive there as well. I was not afraid to die.”
“Neither was I.”
Phillip nods.
“I know. That’s why it worked with you. Perhaps it is the one who gave up who can be revived in the end. The weakest and not the strongest. In a sense, we embraced death enough that this new life had another chance. Perhaps we ‘arrived’ here again.”
I nod. That makes sense, I had given up entirely.
“Then,” Phillip adds. “When you were hurt trying to take on the Cromwells, you’d lost too much blood. You were fading fast. The doctor tried every type of blood, but…”
“My blood is strange now.”
“Yes. Mine as well.”
It dawns on me. “You gave me blood?”
“I did.”
My mouth drops open. Phillip had saved my life.
He laughs and looks away. “I did. I swear they ran me dry giving it to you. The doctor said we were so similar in ways, and now…”
And now we share blood.
I lunge toward him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, hugging him to me. Tears flow over my cheeks. “Thank you,” I croak.
Phillip hugs me back, but he’s embarrassed by the praise.
“Sorry,” I say, drying my face on my shirt. “I’ve never had a brother.”
“Me, either. I mean a sister.”
“How touching.”
I spin around to find Cory watching from the edge of a dense forest. His face is tight with anger. “When I woke, you had gone.”
“Is it true?” he asks, blue eyes searching us like a boy who just found his Christmas tree surrounded by toys. “You’re both made by him? You share blood? Man, I want to shake his hand. He hated Simon, I hear. That’s why there is all of this.” Cory motions with a hand at the world around him. “So, are you both the same strength? What can you do, anyway? I’m curious.”
Curious and jealous. His eyes dart to mine, and he licks his lips and smiles. “A tad.”
I wipe my eyes and look away. I want to spit in his face. I want to attack him. But I can’t do anything without being sent away again. The thought alone makes me shiver with dread.
Cory comes closer, and motions between Phillip and me. “Fight each other.”
Phillip stands, indignant. “What?”
Cory steps up to Phillip. Their heights are almost identical. “You heard me, Skull. Wolf. Whatever they call you. Fight each other. Now.”