Without warning, the elevator door slid shut behind her and she could hear the distinct hum of the grate moving away. She ran back, pressing her hands firmly against the metal door and trying to pry it open with her bare fingers. When that didn’t work, she resorted to banging her fists against the door in anger and sheer panic. She ignored the pain in her hands, only caring about leaving the room that evoked so many horrible memories for her. The sterile smell that seemed to emanate from the walls and the almost blindingly white surroundings were enough to make her sick to her stomach as she imagined the Angel telling her about all of the people she had killed without a second thought.
More desperate than ever, Brynn tried to work her fingers into the small space where the door met the elevator wall, pulling with all of her might to open it. Much to her surprise, the door actually began to move. It slid slowly open, almost of its own accord, to reveal the one person Brynn hoped to never encounter.
Her Angel.
She stood there, fully formed and in person, not just a figment of Brynn’s imagination or part of a nightmare. Brynn took an involuntary step back, a small gasp escaping her lips at the beauty of the woman who seemed to tower over her, making Brynn feel like a toddler.
At first the Angel didn’t say anything, but instead looked wordlessly at Brynn with that same cruel half-smile on her face that she always wore in Brynn’s dreams. After a moment, however, she seemed to remember herself and entered the room, letting the elevator door slide shut behind her with a note of finality. The Angel wore her usual white ensemble, her short white hair framing her face in its asymmetrical bob.
“It took you long enough, Brynn,” she said, causing Brynn to jump slightly at the sound of her own name. “Could I really have made it any easier for you to break into the facility?” The woman looked over at her with a raised eyebrow, her lip curling up as if she were looking at something filthy she had just stepped in.
“What?” was all Brynn managed to say.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot you’re not Rachel. Maybe I need to talk a bit slower for this to get through that thick skull of yours,” she said slowly, her violet eyes flashing like she was playing her favorite game. Brynn couldn’t help but feel that this whole situation made the Angel very happy. “I let you break in. Do you really think we’d have no security in this facility?” she asked. “Didn’t you think it was a little peculiar that the lock on the back of the train was so easy to pick?”
“No, we worked hard to get here,” Brynn insisted before realizing she had just given her friends away with that one simple phrase.
“Ah yes. We,” the Angel repeated, her lips curing up in the corners. “Sorry about your friend, by the way. Don’t worry. I’m sure it wasn’t too painful.”
Brynn felt the color drain from her face, but held onto one hope—the Angel had said friend, not friends. That meant they only knew about one of the boys. But whom had they caught? Ty wasn’t very sneaky, but Jonah was wearing all black in the stark white base.
“How cute,” the Angel said after a moment of silence. “You’re thinking things through. That would have served Rachel well. But I have to stop comparing you two, don’t I?” she asked, stepping closer to Brynn as she spoke.
She brought her paper white hand up to Brynn’s face, grabbing her chin and turning her face from side to side as her violet eyes scanned her features. Brynn shuddered under her cold and powerful grip. Her hand felt strong enough to crack Brynn’s cheekbones with one squeeze.
“Though I must admit, the resemblance is quite shocking. It’s like I’ve gotten a brand new toy to replace the old one I broke,” she said with a cold laugh before releasing Brynn.
“You want something from me,” Brynn stated, not sure where she had gotten her courage from and hoping that her dreams were correct. “Information.”
The Angel’s face fell for a moment, obviously not expecting Brynn to know as much as she did. It gave Brynn a brief surge of pleasure to know that she had unbalanced the terrifying creature.
“Oh, I’ll get the information out of you. I have no doubt about that,” the woman answered.
“Like you got it out of Rachel?” Brynn countered, trying to keep her voice from shaking the way her knees were. She wanted desperately to reach out and grab the table beside the hospital bed for support, but she knew it would make her seem weak.
“It doesn’t matter that Rachel didn’t last long enough to tell me what I needed to know. We obviously figured out her little trick with the tissue sample when you came along,” the Angel said. “It wasn’t very clever of her to die for something that would so obviously present itself to us in a matter of time.”
“So I’m a clone of Rachel?” Brynn asked, unable to worry about the little power struggle they were currently in when so many answers were within her grasp.
“Oh, so now I’m the one with the answers, am I?” the Angel asked, smiling once more.
“But you don’t have all the answers,” Brynn said, going out on a limb and hoping she was right. She could tell by the flash of anger in her Angel’s eyes that she had guessed correctly. “I still have some of them,” she lied, tapping her head for effect.
“So what do you want? To live?” the Angel said, sounding disgusted with such a trivial request.
“I want to exchange information with you,” Brynn answered simply, trying to sound uninterested. “You’re Eris, aren’t you?” she asked, remembering the name she had read on the computer screen in the records room.
“I sincerely hope that wasn’t your first question, because I should think that answer is obvious,” she responded, her violet eyes narrowing as she smiled viciously.
“It was a statement,” Brynn lied. “My first question is this: am I a clone of Rachel?”
“Well, if you’re the one with all of the knowledge, shouldn’t you already know that?” Eris asked her, raising a skeptical eyebrow at the inexperienced young girl standing before her, shaking like a leaf. “I don’t know how any of you managed to function on this pathetic continent with such limited brain usage. Honestly it escapes me why we bothered to populate your history books with such a convincingly fabricated history if none of you ever bothered to crack open a book every once in a while.”
“Answer the question,” Brynn demanded flatly. “That’s what the deal was.”
Eris narrowed her eyes for a moment, unhappy with being spoken to so forcefully, but she answered her, knowing the potential to gain the answers she so desired was greater than her pride.
“You’re not a clone, per se. You were made from a tissue sample she smuggled into the creation bay once she figured out that she didn’t have much longer here. There weren’t supposed to be any real human tissue samples in there. Though the fact that you seem to retain some of her memories is a bit shocking,” she said nonchalantly. “We hadn’t anticipated that you’d dream in Rachel’s memories.”
Brynn tried to suppress a shudder at the fact that the Angel somehow knew what she was dreaming about. Did they have the ability to monitor her dreams? If that was true, then she’d already know that Brynn didn’t know what Rachel’s last secret was.
“Your turn,” Eris said darkly, letting Brynn know that the secret had better be worth her time.
She thought desperately of a convincing lie, trying to remember the things she had read on the computer.
“Rachel didn’t just send me to Halcyon. She sent something to Panurgic as well,” Brynn said hurriedly, glad that she had remembered the name of one of the other tests, since the third continent was a complete blank to her.
“We already know about the transmission,” Eris said with a wave of her hand, irritated that this was the big reveal. “What else did she do? We know there was something.”
Brynn thought about the orphanages, the fabricated humans, and the test continents, but she couldn’t think of any more fake information for the Angel, so instead she tried to get the upper hand.
“That was my first bit of informati
on to offer. It’s not my fault you already knew it. That means it’s my turn to ask a question,” Brynn said petulantly, taking a step back when the Angel walked toward her angrily.
She now had her back against the soft white wall and held her breath, hoping the Angel wouldn’t come any closer. Luckily Eris had regained herself and seemed to be stable once more, standing stationary a few steps away.
“Fine,” was all she said in the smooth, deep voice that had haunted Brynn’s dreams for years.
“What are you testing for?” Brynn asked, causing the Angel to laugh loudly.
“That’s your question?” she asked in disbelief. “How is it that you know so much, but you aren’t aware of the most basic concept of why we’re here?” she said, still laughing.
It was a deep, rich sound that would have been comforting if it wasn’t so terrifying. Brynn didn’t respond to the Angel’s question, but simply continued to stare at her, waiting for an answer.
“We’re testing for the perfect society,” she finally answered. “What you call Utopia.”
This took Brynn aback. She hadn’t expected that answer and was shocked that someone like Eris would even care what society worked best. She couldn’t imagine this woman dedicating her life to such a discovery. There had to be something more to it.
“Now,” Eris said in a serious tone, lowering her chin and staring at Brynn intently. “Tell me what else Rachel did.”
Brynn floundered for a moment, trying to come up with a convincing lie. The Angel watched her face, quickly becoming frustrated with the lack of an answer.
“You don’t know,” she said, realization dawning on her. “No. You do know…it’s just buried somewhere in Rachel’s memories,” she worked out slowly, her eyes never leaving Brynn’s face. “We just have to come up with some way to extract it from you like we did with Rachel.”
In the blink of an eye, Eris had slammed Brynn up against the padded wall, holding each of her arms above her head so that she was pinned. Brynn glimpsed something shiny in her right hand and noted with distress that it was a syringe. She had never seen someone move so quickly in her life, and she was beginning to think that Eris wasn’t entirely human.
Her face was so close to Brynn’s that it was difficult to focus on her purple eyes as she whispered to her.
“I hope you’re stronger than Rachel, because we need you to last long enough to give us that information,” Eris said darkly, her voice threatening. “You’ve seen Rachel’s memories haven’t you, Brynn? You know how creative I am.” The Angel smiled at her; a twisted expression that showed just how sick the woman really was. That she enjoyed every ounce of pain she extracted from people.
“Are you sure you don’t remember what Rachel did?” she asked, making Brynn sincerely wish she did remember. It would probably make the short remainder of her life much less painful.
“I don’t know,” Brynn whimpered, dropping her tough façade and becoming exactly what she was—a terrified little girl who was finally facing her nightmare.
Eris squeezed Brynn’s right arm where her icy hand held it right below the wrist. Brynn felt a snap that sent a shudder through her entire body and then heard a high-pitched scream that must have come from her, though she could barely remember emitting it through the blinding white pain. Her hand went numb instantly, though she didn’t experience any such luck with her arm, which was now throbbing with the worst pain she had ever felt. The Angel’s pupils seemed to be dilating with pleasure over Brynn’s obvious agony.
“I won’t ask you again,” Eris said quietly, her face still only inches away from Brynn’s.
“I don’t know anything!” Brynn screamed, a tear rolling down her cheek as she tried to turn her face away from the Angel in front of her. “Please,” she begged, her voice cracking on the word.
“It’s fine. I know how to handle this particular situation,” Eris said calmly, releasing Brynn’s good arm for a split second before the needle she held flashed through the air, landing in the side of Brynn’s neck.
Compared to the break in her arm, the needle was a welcome relief that sent a warm sensation through Brynn’s entire body, making her feel heavy inside. The warmth even seemed to dull the pain in Brynn’s arm as her eyelids grew heavy.
Brynn sleepily watched Eris toss the syringe to the side. As it flew through the air she saw something completely unexpected behind the woman. She couldn’t tell if it was the drugs making her hallucinate or if some miracle really had happened, but there stood Ty, one finger over his lips telling Brynn to be quiet, and his other hand grasping the metal water pitcher that, seconds before, had sat on the table next to the bed. He wore the most furious expression she had ever seen on his face and she was actually quite scared of him.
Brynn turned her attention back to Eris, not wanting to give Ty away. Her eyelids were fluttering open and closed as she tried to hold onto consciousness. The Angel leaned her face in even closer to Brynn’s so that she could whisper to her in her last conscious moments, “We’re going to have so much fun together, Brynn.”
Opening her seemingly swollen mouth to protest, she saw Ty bring the water pitcher back behind his head slowly. As he swung it quickly forward, the last sensation Brynn was aware of was the sickening sound of a dull thud and warm liquid that she sincerely hoped was water splashing across her face.
Chapter 28: Fog
Brynn’s fractured memory over the unknown space of time was more like a series of images that didn’t seem to make any sense. She saw the bright lights of A1 as the walls passed by her. She could feel Ty’s shoulder digging into her stomach as he hauled her away from the room in her nightmares. She briefly glimpsed a dark and damp room whose walls seemed to be made of an actual mountainside. She heard the creak of old rusted metal that rumbled underneath her, feeling like the movement of train tracks, though much slower.
Several times she opened her eyes groggily to see Ty standing over her and the dark stone ceiling above his head moving rapidly as a breeze ruffled his blonde hair. He said something to her that she couldn’t understand before she faded back into her drug induced sleep. At one point she saw a cloudy sky and felt rain on her face before the world went dark again, and the last time she opened her eyes under the effects of the medicine Eris had injected into her, she smelled old, moldy wood and felt a scratchy bed underneath her before slipping away.
* * *
“Brynn?” Ty said in his usual worried tone. “Can you hear me?”
Though she didn’t want to, Brynn opened her eyes slowly, taking in her odd surroundings. She appeared to be in a dirty wooden house with no windows and a dirt floor. She rolled her head from side to side, trying to make sense of what she was seeing and what had happened to her. Endless questions still flooded her mind and she couldn’t quite believe they had somehow managed to make it out of A1 alive.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“We’re in Central Wildwood,” Ty explained. “I didn’t think it would be safe to check into a hotel, so I broke into the basement of an old café. It looks like they use half of it for storage, but there’s a door that separates this half. I’m pretty sure they’ve forgotten it’s here,” he said, looking at the wooden door anxiously.
Brynn tried to sit up, but instantly regretted putting any weight on her right arm. Pain shot through it like acid and she bit her lip to keep from screaming as she cradled the injured arm against her chest. It was heavily bandaged in the same scratchy material she rested her head on, and the pain had been reduced to a dull ache, though whether that was because of the medicine from Eris or the passing of time she wasn’t sure.
“I tried to wrap it, but I don’t know what else to do,” Ty said hopelessly. “I think it’s just a crack because I couldn’t find a ridge or anything in the bone,” he offered. “It did swell a lot though. And the bruising is pretty bad.”
“Eris broke my arm with one hand,” Brynn said vacantly, remembering the feeling of her bone snapping like a twig under the
woman’s strong grasp. “How is that even possible?” she asked, feeling very much justified in her fear of the Angel at that particular moment.
“I don’t think she’s human,” Ty admitted with a disbelieving shake of his head. “When I hit her with that water pitcher, it should have killed her,” he said, making Brynn feel awful that she had driven sweet Ty to the point where he had tried to kill someone for her. “But it didn’t kill her. It just knocked her out. She didn’t even bleed when I hit her. How do you not bleed after getting bludgeoned in the head by a thick metal object?”
“You should have seen how fast she was,” Brynn said, her mouth dry and her voice cracking. “If she had seen you, Ty, she would have killed you in a second,” she continued, her eyes welling up with tears at the thought.
“Well, I wasn’t going to let her kill you,” Ty answered matter-of-factly. “Isn’t that the whole reason I came with you and Jonah?”
“Jonah,” Brynn repeated, her mind working hard to remember if he had been in the room with Ty in those last moments. “Where is Jonah?” she asked.
Ty didn’t answer for a moment. He looked down at Brynn’s good hand, which he held, and sighed deeply. His thumb made small, gentle circles over her wrist as he opened and shut his mouth several times, trying to come up with the words he wanted to say.
“I never found him,” he answered slowly, still not meeting Brynn’s eyes. “But I couldn’t let you stay in that place. They were after you, Brynn—I had to get you out right away,” he said, trying to defend his decision to leave Jonah behind.
“I knew they had gotten one of you,” Brynn responded distantly as tears rolled freely from her eyes to pool in her ears. “Eris said they’d gotten my friend…I just didn’t know which one of you it was.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ty said, sounding like he meant it. “I didn’t know what else to do. I found this little underground tunnel deep inside the facility with this thing that looked like a miniature train car and I had to make a decision. I had to keep you safe. It was our only chance to get out.”