This, I now realize, is why they’ve been so patient with a seventeen-year-old who’s declared herself ruler of an entire continent. This is why they’ve so quietly abided the truth of her having slaughtered one of their fellow commanders.
And Juliette has no idea.
She has no idea she’s being played and preyed upon. She has no idea that she has no real power here. No chance at change. No opportunity to make a difference in the world. She was, and will forever be nothing more than a toy to them—a science experiment to watch carefully, to make certain the concoction doesn’t boil over too soon.
But it did.
Juliette failed their tests over a month ago, and my father tried to kill her for it. He tried to kill her because he’d decided that she’d become a distraction. Gone was the opportunity for this Unnatural to grow into an adversary.
The monster we’ve bred has tried to kill my own son. She’s since attacked me like a feral animal, shooting me in both my legs. I’ve never seen such wildness—such blind, inhuman rage. Her mind shifts without warning. She showed no signs of psychosis upon first arrival in the house, but appeared to dissociate from any structure of rational thought while attacking me. Having seen her instability with my own eyes makes me only more certain of what needs to be done. I write this now as a decree from my hospital bed, and as a precaution to my fellow commanders. In the case that I don’t recover from these wounds and am unable to follow through with what needs to be done: You, who are reading this now, you must react. Finish what I could not do. The younger sister is a failed experiment. She is, as we feared, disconnected from humanity. Worse, she’s become a distraction for Aaron. He’s become—in a toxic turn of events—impossibly drawn to her, with no apparent regard for his own safety. I have no idea what she’s done to his mind. I only know now that I should never have entertained my own curiosity by allowing him to bring her on base. It’s a shame, really, that she is nothing like her elder sister. Instead, Juliette Ferrars has become an incurable cancer we must cut out of our lives for good.
—AN EXCERPT FROM ANDERSON’S DAILY LOG
Juliette threatened the balance of The Reestablishment.
She was an experiment gone wrong. And she’d become a liability. She needed to be expunged from the earth.
My father tried so hard to destroy her.
And I see now that his failure has been of great interest to the other commanders. My father’s daily logs were shared; all the supreme commanders shared their logs with one another. It was the only way for the six of them to remain apprised, at all times, of each other’s daily goings-on.
So. They knew his story. They’ve known about my feelings for her.
And they have their orders to kill Juliette.
But they’re waiting. And I have to assume there’s something more—some other explanation for their hesitation. Maybe they think they can rehabilitate her. Maybe they’re wondering whether Juliette cannot still be of service to them and to their cause, much like her sister has been.
Her sister.
I’m haunted at once by a memory of her.
Brown-haired and bony. Jerking uncontrollably underwater. Long brown waves suspended, like jittery eels, around her face. Electric wires threaded under her skin. Several tubes permanently attached to her neck and torso. She’d been living underwater for so long when I first saw her that she hardly resembled a person. Her flesh was milky and shriveled, her mouth stretched out in a grotesque O, wrapped around a regulator that forced air into her lungs. She’s only a year older than Juliette. And she’s been held in captivity for twelve years.
Still alive, but only barely.
I had no idea she was Juliette’s sister. I had no idea she was anyone at all. When I first met my assignment, she had no name. I was given only instructions, and ordered to follow them. I didn’t know who or what I’d been assigned to oversee. I understood only that she was a prisoner—and I knew she was being tortured—but I didn’t know then that there was anything supernatural about the girl. I was an idiot. A child.
I slam the back of my head against the wall, once. Hard. My eyes squeeze shut.
Juliette has no idea she ever had a real family—a horrible, insane family—but a family nonetheless. And if Castle is to be believed, The Reestablishment is coming for her. To kill her. To exploit her. So we have to act. I have to warn her, and I have to do it as soon as possible.
But how—how do I tell her any of this? How do I tell her without explaining my part in all of this?
I’ve always known Juliette was adopted, but I never told her this truth simply because I thought it would make things worse. My understanding was that Juliette’s biological parents were long dead. I didn’t see how telling her that she had real, dead parents would make her life any better.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I knew.
And now I have to confess. Not just this, but the truth about her sister—that she is still alive and being actively tortured by The Reestablishment. That I contributed to that torture.
Or this:
That I am the true monster, completely and utterly unworthy of her love.
I close my eyes, press the back of my hand to my mouth and feel my body break apart within me. I don’t know how to extricate myself from the mess made by my own father. A mess in which I was unintentionally complicit. A mess that, upon its unveiling, will destroy the little bit of happiness I’ve managed to piece together in my life.
Juliette will never, ever forgive me.
I will lose her.
And it will kill me.
Juliette
I wonder what they’re thinking. My parents. I wonder where they are. I wonder if they’re okay now, if they’re happy now, if they finally got what they wanted. I wonder if my mother will have another child. I wonder if someone will ever be kind enough to kill me and I wonder if hell is better than here. I wonder what my face looks like now. I wonder if I’ll ever breathe fresh air again.
I wonder about so many things.
Sometimes I’ll stay awake for days just counting everything I can find. I count the walls, the cracks in the walls, my fingers and toes. I count the springs in the bed, the threads in the blanket, the steps it takes to cross the room and back. I count my teeth and the individual hairs on my head and the number of seconds I can hold my breath.
But sometimes I get so tired that I forget I’m not allowed to wish for things anymore and I find myself wishing for the one thing I’ve always wanted. The only thing I’ve always dreamt about.
I wish all the time for a friend.
I dream about it. I imagine what it would be like. To smile and be smiled upon. To have a person to confide in, someone who wouldn’t throw things at me or stick my hands in the fire or beat me for being born. Someone who would hear that I’d been thrown away and would try to find me, who would never be afraid of me.
Someone who’d know I’d never try to hurt them.
I fold myself into a corner of this room and bury my head in my knees and rock back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I wish and I wish and I wish and I dream of impossible things until I’ve cried myself to sleep.
I wonder what it would be like to have a friend.
And then I wonder who else is locked in this asylum. I wonder where the other screams are coming from.
I wonder if they’re coming from me.
—AN EXCERPT FROM JULIETTE’S JOURNALS IN THE ASYLUM
I feel strange this morning.
I feel slow, like I’m wading through mud, like my bones have filled with lead and my head, oh—
I flinch.
My head has never been heavier.
I wonder if it’s the last dregs of the poison still haunting my veins, but something feels wrong with me today. My memories of my time in the asylum are suddenly too present—perched too fully at the forefront of my mind. I thought I’d managed to shove those memories out of my head but no, here they are again, dredged out of the darkness. 26
4 days in perfect isolation. Nearly a year without access or outlet to the outside. To another human being.
So long, so long, so very, very long without the warmth of human contact.
I shiver involuntarily. Jerk upward.
What’s wrong with me?
Sonya and Sara must’ve heard me moving because they’re now standing before me, their voices clear but somehow, vibrating. Echoing off the walls. My ears won’t stop ringing. I squint to make sense of their faces but I feel dizzy suddenly, disoriented, like my body is sideways or maybe flat on the ground or maybe I need to be flat on the ground, or oh
oh I think I might be sick—
“Thank you for the bucket,” I say, still nauseous. I try to sit up and for some reason I can’t remember how. My skin has broken out in a cold sweat. “What’s wrong with me?” I say. “I thought you healed—healed—”
I’m gone again.
Head spinning.
Eyes closed against the light. The floor-to-ceiling windows we’ve installed can’t seem to block the sun from invading the room and I can’t help but wonder when I’ve ever seen the sun shine so brightly. Over the last decade our world collapsed inward, the atmosphere unpredictable, the weather changing in sharp and dramatic spikes. It snows where it shouldn’t; rains where it once couldn’t; the clouds are always gray; the birds gone forever from the sky. The once-bright green leaves of trees and lawns are now dull and brittle with decay. It’s March now, and even as we approach spring the sky shows no sign of change. The earth is still cold, still iced over, still dark and muddy.
Or at least, it was yesterday.
Someone places a cool rag on my forehead and the cold is welcome; my skin feels inflamed even as I shiver. Slowly, my muscles unclench. But I wish someone would do something about the glaring sunlight. I’m squinting, even with my eyes closed, and it’s making my headache worse.
“The wound is fully healed,” I hear someone saying, “but it looks like the poison hasn’t worked its way out of her system—”
“I don’t understand,” says another voice. “How is that possible? Why aren’t you able to heal her completely?”
“Sonya,” I manage to say. “Sara?”
“Yes?” The twin sisters answer at the same time, and I can feel the rush of their footsteps, hard like drumbeats against my head, as they hurry to my bedside.
I try to gesture toward the windows. “Can we do something about the sun?” I say. “It’s too bright.”
They help me up into a seated position and I feel my head-spin begin to steady. I blink my eyes open with a great deal of effort just in time to have someone hand me a cup of water.
“Drink this,” Sonya says. “Your body is severely dehydrated.”
I gulp the water down quickly, surprised by my own thirst. They hand me another glass. I drink that, too. I have to drink five glasses of water before I can hold my head up without immense difficulty.
When I finally feel more normal, I look around. Eyes wide-open. I have a massive headache, but the other symptoms are beginning to fade.
I see Warner first.
He’s standing in a corner of the room, eyes bloodshot, yesterday’s clothes rumpled on his body, and he’s staring at me with a look of unmasked fear that surprises me. It’s entirely unlike him. Warner rarely shows emotion in public.
I wish I could say something, but it doesn’t feel like the right time. Sonya and Sara are still watching me carefully, their hazel eyes bright against their brown skin. But something about them looks different to me. Maybe it’s that I’ve never looked at them this closely anywhere but underground, but the brilliant light of the sun has reduced their pupils to the size of pinpricks, and it makes their eyes look different. Bigger. New.
“The light is so strange today,” I can’t help saying. “Has it ever been this bright?”
Sonya and Sara glance out the window, glance back at me, and frown at each other. “How are you feeling?” they say. “Does your head still hurt? Do you feel dizzy?”
“My head is killing me,” I say, and try to laugh. “What was in those bullets?” I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger. “Do you know if the headache will go away soon?”
“Honestly—we’re not sure what’s happening right now.” This, from Sara.
“Your wound is mended,” says Sonya, “but it seems the poison is still affecting your mind. We can’t know for sure if it was able to cause permanent damage before we got to you.”
At this, I look up. Feel my spine stiffen. “Permanent damage?” I say. “To my brain? Is that really possible?”
They nod. “We’ll monitor you closely for the next couple of weeks just to be sure. The illusions you’re experiencing might end up being nothing.”
“What?” I look around. Look at Warner, who still won’t speak. “What illusions? I just have a headache.” I squint again, turning away from the window. “Yikes. Sorry,” I say, eyes narrowed against the light, “it’s been so long since we’ve had days like this”—I laugh—“I think I’m more accustomed to the dark.” I place my hand over my eyes like a visor. “We really need to get some shades on these windows. Someone remind me to tell Kenji about that.”
Warner has gone gray. He looks frozen in his skin.
Sonya and Sara share a look of concern.
“What is it?” I say, my stomach sinking as I look at the three of them. “What’s wrong? What are you not telling me?”
“There’s no sun today,” Sonya says quietly. “It’s snowing again.”
“It’s dark and cloudy, just like every other day,” says Sara.
“What? What are you talking about?” I say, laughing and frowning at the same time. I can feel the heat of the sun on my face. I see it make a direct impact in their eyes, their pupils dilating as they move into the shadows. “You’re joking, right? The sun is so bright I can barely look out the window.”
Sonya and Sara shake their heads.
Warner is staring at the wall, both hands locked behind his neck.
I feel my heart begin to race. “So I’m seeing things?” I say to them. “I’m hallucinating?”
They nod.
“Why?” I say, trying not to panic. “What’s happening to me?”
“We don’t know,” Sonya says, looking into her hands. “But we’re hoping these effects are just temporary.”
I try to slow my breathing. Try to remain calm. “Okay. Well. I need to go. Can I go? I have a thousand things to do—”
“Maybe you should stay here a little while longer,” says Sara. “Let us watch you for a few more hours.”
But I’m shaking my head. “I need to get some air—I need to go outside—”
“No—”
It’s the first thing Warner’s said since I woke up, and he nearly shouts the word at me. He’s holding up his hands in a silent plea.
“No, love,” he says, sounding strange. “You can’t go outside again. Not—not just yet. Please.”
The look on his face is enough to break my heart.
I slow down, feel my racing pulse steady as I stare at him. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry I scared everyone. It was a moment of stupidity and it was totally my fault. I let my guard down for just a second.” I sigh. “I think someone had been watching me, waiting for the right moment. Either way, it won’t happen again.”
I try to smile, and he doesn’t budge. Won’t smile back.
“Really,” I try again. “Don’t worry. I should’ve realized there would be people out there waiting to kill me the moment I seemed vulnerable, but”—I laugh—“believe me, I’ll be more careful next time. I’ll even ask to have a larger guard follow me around.”
He shakes his head.
I study him, his terror. I don’t understand it.
I make an effort to get to my feet. I’m in socks and a hospital gown, and Sonya and Sara hurry me into a robe and slippers. I thank them for everything they’ve done and they squeeze my hands.
&
nbsp; “We’ll be right outside if you need anything,” they say in unison.
“Thank you again,” I say, and smile. “I’ll let you know how it goes with the, um”—I point to my head—“weird visions.”
They nod and disappear.
I take a tentative step toward Warner.
“Hey,” I say gently. “I’m going to be okay. Really.”
“You could’ve been killed.”
“I know,” I say. “I’ve been so off lately—I wasn’t thinking. But this was a mistake I will never make again.” A short laugh. “Really.”
Finally, he sighs. He releases the tension in his shoulders. Runs a hand along the length of his face, the back of his neck.
I’ve never seen him like this before.
“I’m so sorry I scared you,” I say.
“Please don’t apologize to me, love. You don’t have to worry about me,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve been worried about you. How are you feeling?”
“Other than the hallucinating, you mean?” I crack a half grin. “I feel okay. It took me a minute to come back to myself this morning, but I feel much better now. I’m sure the strange visions will be gone soon, too.” I smile, wide, more for his benefit than mine. “Anyway, Delalieu wants me to meet with him ASAP to talk about my speech for the symposium, so I’m thinking maybe I should go do that. I can’t believe it’s happening tomorrow.” I shake my head. “I can’t afford to waste any more time. Although”—I look down at myself—“maybe I should take a shower first? Put on some real clothes?”
I try to smile at him again, to convince him that I’m feeling fine, but he seems unable to speak. He just looks at me, his eyes red-rimmed and raw. If I didn’t know him any better I’d think he’d been crying.
I’m just about to ask him what’s wrong, when he says
“Sweetheart.”
and for some reason I hold my breath.
“I have to talk to you,” he says.
He whispers it, actually.
“Okay,” I say, and exhale. “Talk to me.”
“Not here.”
I feel my stomach flip. My instincts tell me to panic. “Is everything okay?”