I close my eyes and try to follow my little brother’s commands, but it’s hard to hear him at all through the pounding of my headache. The pain is excruciating, all-consuming, a white-hot knife stabbing repeatedly into the back of my brain. Breathe in, breathe out. Here’s the pattern—first there’s a dull, numbing ache, followed shortly by the absolute worst pain you can ever imagine going into your head, a spear shoved through your skull, and the impact of it is so hard that your entire body goes stiff; it lasts for a solid three seconds, followed by a split second of relief. And then it repeats itself all over again.
“How long has it been?” I gasp out to Eden. Dim blue light is slowly filtering in from the windows.
Eden pulls out a tiny square com and presses its lone knob. “Time?” he asks it. The device immediately responds, “Zero five thirty.” He puts it away, a concerned frown on his face. “It’s been almost an hour. Has it gone on this long before?”
I’m dying. I really am dying. It’s times like this when I’m glad that I don’t see much of June anymore. The thought of her seeing me sweating and dirty on my kitchen floor, clutching my baby brother’s hand for dear life like some weepy weakling, while she’s breathtaking in her scarlet gown and jewel-studded hair . . . You know, for that matter, in this moment I’m even relieved that Mom and John can’t see me.
When I moan from another excruciating stab of pain, Eden pulls out his com again and presses the knob. “That’s it. I’m calling the doctors.” When the com beeps, prompting him for his command, he says, “Day needs an ambulance.” Then, before I can protest, he raises his voice and calls out for Lucy.
Seconds later, I hear Lucy approach. She doesn’t turn the light on—she knows that it only makes my headaches that much worse. Instead, I see her stout silhouette in the darkness and hear her exclaim, “Day! How long have you been out here?” She rushes over to me and puts one plump hand against my cheek. Then she glances at Eden and touches his chin. “Did you call for the doctors?”
Eden nods. Lucy inspects my face again, then clucks her tongue in worried disapproval and bustles off to grab a cool towel.
The last place I want to be right now is lying in a Republic hospital—but Eden’s already placed the call, and I’d rather not be dead anyway. My vision has started to blur, and I realize it’s because I can’t stop my eyes from watering nonstop. I wipe a hand across my face and smile weakly at Eden. “Damn, I’m dripping water like a leaky faucet.”
Eden tries to smile back. “Yeah, you’ve had better days,” he replies.
“Hey, kid. Remember that time when John asked you to be in charge of watering the plants outside our door?”
Eden frowns for a second, digging through his memories, and then a grin lights up his face. “I did a pretty good job, didn’t I?”
“You built that little makeshift catapult in front of our door.” I close my eyes and indulge in the memory, a temporary distraction from all the pain. “Yeah, I remember that thing. You kept lobbing water balloons at those poor flowers. Did they even have any petals left after you were done? Oh man, John was so pissed.” He was even madder because Eden was only four at the time and, well, how do you punish your wide-eyed baby brother?
Eden giggles. I wince as another wave of agony hits me.
“What was it that Mom used to say about us?” he asks. Now I can tell that he’s trying to keep my mind on other things too.
I manage a smile. “Mom used to say that having three boys was kind of like having a pet tornado that talked back.” The two of us laugh for a moment, at least before I squint my eyes shut again.
Lucy comes back with the towel. She places it against my forehead, and I sigh in relief at its cool surface. She checks my pulse, then my temperature.
“Daniel,” Eden pipes up while she works. He scoots closer, his eyes still staring blankly off at a spot to the right of my head. “Hang in there, okay?”
Lucy shoots him a critical frown at what his tone implies. “Eden,” she scolds. “More optimism in this house, please.”
A lump rises in my throat, turning my breath shallower. John’s gone, Mom’s gone, Dad’s gone. I watch Eden with a heavy ache in my chest. I used to hope that since he was the youngest of us boys, he might be able to learn from John’s and my mistakes and be the luckiest out of us, maybe make it into a college or earn a good living as a mechanic, that we’d be around to guide him through the difficult times in life. What would happen to him if I were gone too? What happens if he has to stand alone against the Republic?
“Eden,” I suddenly whisper to him, pulling him close. His eyes widen at my urgent tone. “Listen close, yeah? If the Republic ever asks you to go with them, if I’m ever not home or I’m in the hospital and they come knocking on our door, don’t ever go with them. You understand me? You call me first, you scream for Lucy, you . . .” I hesitate. “You call for June Iparis.”
“Your Princeps-Elect?”
“She’s not my—” I grimace at another wave of pain. “Just do it. Call her. Tell her to stop them.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Promise me. Don’t go with them, whatever you do. Okay?” My answer’s cut short when a jolt of pain hits me hard enough to send me collapsing to the ground, curled up into a tight ball. I choke out a shriek—my head feels like it’s being split in two. I even put a trembling hand to the back of my head as if to make sure my brain’s not leaking out onto the floor. Somewhere above me, Eden is shouting. Lucy places another call to the doctor, this time frantic.
“Just hurry!” she yells. “Hurry!”
By the time the medics arrive, I’m fading in and out of consciousness. Through a cloud of haze and fog, I feel myself getting lifted off the kitchen floor and carried out of the apartment tower, then into a waiting ambulance that has been disguised to look like a regular police jeep. Is it snowing? A few light flakes drift onto my face, shocking me with pinpricks of coldness. I call out for Eden and Lucy—they respond from somewhere I can’t see.
Then we’re in the ambulance and pulling away.
All I see for a long time are blobs of color, fuzzy circles moving back and forth across my vision, like I’m peering through thick, bumpy glass. I try to recognize some of them. Are they people? I sure as hell hope so—otherwise I really must have died, or maybe I’m floating in the ocean and debris is just drifting all around me. That doesn’t make any sense, though, unless the doctors just decided to toss me right into the Pacific and forget about me. Where’s Eden? They must’ve taken him away. Just like in the nightmare. They’ve dragged him off to the labs.
I can’t breathe.
My hands try to fly up to my throat, but then someone shouts something and I feel weight against my arms, pinning me down. Something cold is going down my throat, choking me.
“Calm down! You’re okay. Try to swallow.”
I do as the voice says. Swallowing turns out to be more difficult than I thought, but I finally manage a gulp, and whatever the cold thing is slides right down my throat and into my stomach, chilling me to my core.
“There,” the voice goes on, less agitated now. “Should help with any future headaches, I think.” He doesn’t seem to be talking to me anymore—and a second later, another voice chimes in.
“Seems to be working a little, Doctor.”
I must’ve passed out again after that, because the next time I wake up, the pattern on the ceiling’s different and late afternoon light is slanting into my room. I blink and look around. The excruciating pain in my head is gone, at least for now. I can also see clearly enough to know I’m in a hospital room, the ever-present portrait of Anden on one wall and a screen against another wall, broadcasting news. I groan, then close my eyes and let out a sigh. Stupid hospitals. So sick of them.
“Patient is awake.” I turn to see a monitor near my bedside that recites the phrase. A second later, a real human’s voice pops up over its speakers. “Mister Wing?” it says.
“Yeah?” I mutter back.
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“Excellent,” the voice replies. “Your brother will be in shortly to see you.”
No sooner than her voice clicks off, my door bursts open and Eden comes running in with two exasperated nurses hot on his tail. “Daniel,” he gasps out, “you’re finally awake! Sure took you long enough.” His lack of sight catches up with him—he stumbles against the edge of a drawer before I can warn him, and the nurses have to catch him in their arms to keep him from falling to the floor.
“Easy there, kid,” I call out. My voice sounds tired, even though I feel alert and pain-free. “How long was I out? Where is . . . ?” I pause, confused for a moment. That’s weird. What was our caretaker’s name again? I grasp for it in my thoughts. Lucy. “Where’s Lucy?” I finish.
He doesn’t answer right away. When the nurses finally situate Eden beside me in bed, he crawls closer to me and flings his arms around my neck. To my shock, I realize that he’s crying. “Hey.” I pat his head. “Calm down—it’s okay. I’m awake.”
“I thought you weren’t going to make it,” he murmurs. His pale eyes search for mine. “I thought you were gone.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m right here.” I let him sob for a little while, his head buried against my chest, his tears blurring his glasses and staining my hospital gown. There’s a coping mechanism I’ve started using recently where I pretend to retreat back into the shell of my heart and crawl out of my body, like I’m not really here and am instead observing the world from another person’s perspective. Eden’s not my brother. He’s not even real. Nothing is real. Everything is illusion. It helps. I wait without emotion as Eden gradually composes himself, and then I carefully let myself back into my body.
Finally, when he’s wiped away the last of his tears, he sits up and burrows in beside me. “Lucy’s filling out paperwork up front.” His voice still sounds a little shaky. “You’ve been out for about ten hours. They said they had to rush you out of our building through the main entrance—there just wasn’t any time to try sneaking you out.”
“Did anyone see?”
Eden rubs his temples in an attempt to remember. “Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t remember—I was too distracted. I spent all morning out in the waiting room because they wouldn’t let me inside.”
“Do you know . . .” I swallow. “Have you heard anything from the doctors?”
Eden sighs in relief. “Not really. But at least you’re okay now. The doctors said you had a bad reaction to the medicine they put you on. They’re taking you off it and trying something different.”
The way Eden says this makes my heart beat faster. He doesn’t fully grasp the reality of the situation—he still thinks that the only reason I’d collapsed like that wasn’t because I’m getting worse, but because I just had a bad reaction. A sick, sinking feeling hits my stomach. Of course he’d be optimistic about it all; of course he thinks this is just a temporary setback. I’d been on that damn medication for the last two months after the first two rounds also stopped working, and with all the extra headaches and nightmares and nausea, I’d hoped that the pills had at least done some good, that they were successfully shrinking the problem spot in my hippocampus—their fancy word for the bottom of my brain. Apparently not. What if nothing works?
I take a deep breath and put on a smile for my brother. “Well, at least they know now. Maybe they’ll try something better this time.”
Eden smiles along, sweet and naïve. “Yeah.”
Several minutes later, my doctor comes in and Eden moves back outside to the waiting room. As the doctor talks in a low voice to me about “our next options,” what treatments they’ll try to experiment with next, he also quietly tells me how small of a chance they have. Like I feared, my reaction wasn’t just some temporary medicine issue. “The medication is slowly shrinking the affected area,” the doctor says, but his expression stays grim. “Still, the area continues to fester, and your body has begun to reject the old medication, forcing us to search for new ones. We are quite simply racing against the clock, Day, trying to shrink it enough and pull it out before it can do its worst.” I listen to it all with a straight face; his voice sounds like it’s underwater, unimportant and out of focus.
Finally, I stop him and say, “Look, just tell me straight up. How much longer do I have? If nothing works out?”
The doctor purses his lips, hesitates, and then shakes his head with a sigh. “Probably a month,” he admits. “Maybe two. We’re doing the best we can.”
A month or two. Well, they’ve been wrong in the past—a month or two probably means more like four or five. Still. I look toward the door, where Eden’s probably pressed against the wood and trying in vain to hear what we’re saying. Then I turn back to the doctor and swallow the lump in my throat. “Two months,” I echo. “Is there any chance?”
“We might try some riskier treatments, although those have side effects that may be fatal if you react badly to them. A surgery before you’re ready will likely kill you.” The doctor crosses his arms. His glasses catch the cold fluorescent light and shine in a way that blocks out his eyes entirely. He looks like a machine. “I would suggest, Day, that you begin getting your priorities in order.”
“My priorities in order?”
“Prepare your brother for the news,” he replies. “And settle any unfinished business.”
AT 0810 HOURS ON THE MORNING AFTER THE EMERGENCY banquet, Anden calls me. “It’s Captain Bryant,” he says. “He has put in his last request, and his last request is to see you.”
I sit at the edge of my bed, blinking away a night of fitful sleep, trying to work up the energy to understand what Anden is telling me.
“Tomorrow we transfer him to a prison on the other side of Denver to prepare for his final day. He’s asked if he can see you before then.”
“What does he want?”
“Whatever he has to say, he wants it heard by your ears alone,” Anden replies. “Remember, June—you have the option to refuse him. We don’t have to grant this last request.”
Tomorrow, Thomas will be dead. I wonder whether Anden feels any guilt over sentencing a soldier to die. The thought of facing Thomas alone in a jail cell sends a wave of panic through me, but I steel myself. Maybe Thomas has something to say about my brother. Do I want to hear it?
“I’ll see him,” I finally reply. “And hopefully this is the last time.”
Anden must hear something in my voice, because his words soften. “Of course. I’ll arrange for your escort.”
0930 HOURS.
DENVER STATE PENITENTIARY.
The hall where Thomas and Commander Jameson are being held is lit with cold, fluorescent light, and the sound of my boots echoes against the high ceiling. Several soldiers flank me, but aside from us, the hall feels empty and ominous. Portraits of Anden hang at sporadic intervals along the walls. My eyes stay focused on each of the cells we pass, studying them, details running through my mind in an effort to keep myself calm and focused. (32 × 32 feet in size, smooth steel walls, bulletproof glass, cams mounted outside of the cells instead of inside. Most of them are empty, and the ones that are filled hold three of the Senators who had plotted against Anden. This floor is reserved for prisoners associated specifically with Anden’s attempted assassination.)
“If you experience any trouble at all,” one of the soldiers says to me, tapping his cap in a polite bow, “just call us in. We’ll have that traitor down on the ground before he can make a move.”
“Thank you,” I reply, my eyes still fixed on the cells as we draw closer. I know I won’t need to do what he just said, because I know Thomas won’t ever disobey the Elector and try to hurt me. Thomas is many things, but he isn’t rebellious.
We reach the end of the hall where two adjacent cells sit, each one guarded by two soldiers.
Someone stirs in the cell closest to me. I turn toward the movement. I don’t even have time to study the cell’s interior before a woman raps her fingers against the steel bars. I jump, then swall
ow the cry that rises up in my throat as I stare into the face of Commander Jameson.
As she fixes her eyes on mine, she gives me a smile that makes me break out in a cold sweat. I remember this smile—she’d smiled like this on the night Metias died, when she approved me to become a junior agent in her patrol. There is no emotion there, nothing compassionate or even angry. Few things frighten me—but facing the cold, merciless expression of my brother’s true killer is one of them.
“Well,” she says in a low voice. “If it isn’t Iparis, come here to see us.” Her eyes flicker to me; the soldiers gather closer to me in a protective gesture. Don’t be afraid. I straighten as well as I can, then clench my jaw and force myself to face her without flinching.
“You’re wasting my time, Commander,” I say. “I’m not here for you. And the next time I see you will be the day you stand before the firing squad.”
She just smiles at me. “So brave, now that you have your handsome young Elector to hide behind. Isn’t that so?” When I narrow my eyes, she laughs. “Commander DeSoto would’ve been a better Elector than that boy could ever be. When the Colonies invade, they’ll burn this country to the ground. The people will regret ever putting their support behind a little boy.” She presses against the bars, as if trying to edge as close to me as possible. I swallow hard, but even through my fear, my anger boils under the surface. I don’t look away. It’s strange, but I think I see a sheen of gloss across her eyes, something that looks disconcerting above her unstable smile. “You were one of my favorites. Do you know why I was so interested in having you on my patrol? It’s because I saw myself reflected in you. We’re the same, you and I. I would’ve been Princeps, too, you know. I deserved it.”