Brynn couldn’t be sure how long she was in the white room. Time seemed to come and go without her notice and after a while, Brynn couldn’t tell if she were living out one of Rachel’s memories in her nightmares, or if she had actually woken up and was still stuck in the room.
The plastic tubing in her arm felt cold and foreign, though her body was so heavy that she couldn’t move to pull it out. Eris hadn’t bothered putting Brynn in the white hospital clothes she had expected to find herself in. Instead she remained in something resembling a white version of her default outfit.
Every so often, Brynn would become aware of a Worker in her room, adjusting the clear, liquid filled bag connected to the tube in her arm, or forcefully opening Brynn’s eyelids to check her pupil dilation. She couldn’t help but think that for someone who hated her so much, Eris went through an awful lot of trouble to make sure Brynn was all right.
She knew it couldn’t just be Eris’s desire for knowledge that fueled her hate towards Brynn. It was something deeper. Yes, Rachel had somehow sabotaged Eris’s plans and that was enough for the woman to dedicate her life to getting answers from Brynn; but there was something else to it. Something that had to do with Eris’s pride.
Rachel had been the first person to ever outsmart her and get away with it and the Angel couldn’t live with that. Her hate for Brynn was a more deep-seated one. She hated the very idea of someone who could possibly ruin her programming and because of Rachel, Brynn was left behind for Eris to ‘correct’. The woman wouldn’t stop until she had gotten the information from Brynn, more to save her own pride than to save her actual purpose in life.
Being locked in the room and unable to move was reminiscent of Brynn’s constant nightmares on so many levels, the most torturing, however, was the fact that she was forced to lie motionless and imagine what was happening to her friends. She had left the group in an attempt to save Jonah and all she had done was trap Ty and herself. No matter what she tried to do, it seemed like Brynn only ever made things worse.
At least two good things had come from her visit to A1, she thought. They had managed to install the bug to stop the gas manufacturing wing, and Brynn was certain Jonah wasn’t working for Eris.
Brynn knew that Eris wouldn’t miss a chance to rub a revelation like that in her face. If Jonah really had been working with Eris she would love nothing more than to point out her sad, misguided attempt to connect with someone who would ultimately betray her.
Instead, Eris had threatened to hurt Jonah to get to Brynn. This had to mean that Jonah didn’t work for her.
As if the very thought of the awful woman were enough to conjure her into existence, Eris was suddenly at Brynn’s side, sitting on the bed and looking down at her. She couldn’t be sure how long Eris had been there since her dreams and wakefulness seemed to be indiscernible at the moment.
“Where are they?” Brynn asked, her throat feeling like she’d swallowed a mouthful of sand and her lips dry.
“Don’t worry about them, dear,” Eris stated simply. “I’m just making sure they don’t have any information I need before… well, making them useful.”
“Jonah?” she asked, hoping her short, weak sentences were enough for Eris to understand.
“Him?” Eris answered with a shake of her head. “He’s hasn’t been much good to us for a long time,” she finished, leaving Brynn to wonder exactly what that meant.
Had Jonah worked for them before but decided to leave their service? Had they kicked him out? In a perfect world, Brynn imagined that Jonah had been working for Eris when she’d met him, but had decided to leave after getting to know Brynn.
She tried to quickly remind herself how farfetched that particular scenario was though.
“I’m afraid I may have gone a bit too far with that little Maxwell stunt,” Eris said out of the blue, not really sounding sorry despite her words. Brynn could only imagine that by ‘stunt’ she meant killing him and forcing Rachel to find his body. “You remember Maxwell, right?” she asked, raising a pale white eyebrow at Brynn quizzically.
Brynn tried to nod her head but found that the task was simply too monumental, so instead she settled for blinking up at the Angel.
“I’ve seen your dreams about him,” Eris said cryptically, launching another deluge of questions in Brynn’s mind. Apparently questions were the only thing she’d ever be getting out of her conversations with Eris. “I thought I’d have a little fun with Rachel when I shoved her into that freezer,” Eris went on. “But I’m afraid I might have broken her.”
Brynn closed her eyes, wishing she had the strength to cover her ears and block out the terrible things Eris was saying.
“Do you know, when I tortured her she didn’t even scream?” Eris asked, her eyes now taking on a wickedly happy quality. “I could break her bones, cut her open, burn her skin, and nothing. She didn’t utter so much as one sound.”
Eris almost sounded impressed by this revelation that turned Brynn’s stomach.
“At first I thought she was trying to be brave. Stoic.” Eris brought her cold fingers to Brynn’s forehead to brush a few stray hairs away. “She’d just lay there with this smug look on her face and I’d think to myself, ‘finally I’ve found someone worthy of my time’. But you know what I’m starting to think?”
Brynn didn’t answer, she couldn’t. So she stayed motionless, twitching her fingers and trying to regain feeling in her limbs so that she could strike out at the woman she hated so much.
“I think I broke her long before I meant to,” she finished darkly. “And that’s why I’m afraid the Maxwell stunt was a bit too tasteless. You see, if I’d kept Maxwell alive and just tortured him in front of Rachel until she spoke, I think things would have turned out much better for all of us. I was just too anxious to have some fun.”
A small whimper escaped Brynn’s lips as she continued to flex her fingers, feeling her control slowly returning to her body. She glanced down for a brief second to see Eris sitting on the tube that connected to her arm. She was unwittingly stopping the drug from entering Brynn’s system.
I have to keep her talking, Brynn thought, hoping that if Eris stayed there long enough, Brynn would regain full control over her body and use the pinch on Eris again.
She could feel the cold metal ball still in her pocket. Because Eris hadn’t bothered changing Brynn’s clothes, she hadn’t found the device.
“Jonah’s an A.I.?” Brynn managed to ask, unable to think of anything else that might keep Eris there, sitting on the tube and unwittingly giving Brynn her strength back.
“A.I.,” Eris repeated distastefully. She glared down at Brynn in offense. “How dare you call me an A.I.. Tell me Brynn, if my intelligence is so artificial how is it that I’m constantly able to outsmart someone with biological intelligence?”
Apparently Brynn had hit a nerve without even meaning to. She hadn’t ever considered what A.I. really stood for and she wondered what Eris would call herself if not an A.I..
A ping resonated through the room suddenly and Eris turned towards the door as if she could hear some announcement that Brynn couldn’t.
“I’m sad to cut our little conversation short,” Eris said regretfully as Brynn turned her wrist from side to side. “But I need to go attend to Ty,” she finished, instantly grabbing Brynn’s attention and giving her that same sinking feeling she’d been experiencing so often lately.
“I hope you can be stronger than Rachel and not break when I take your Ty,” she said, before standing and exiting the room without another word, leaving Brynn by herself in the cold, stark facility.
Her arm instantly felt cold again as the drug began seeping into her blood stream once more and it was all Brynn could do to lift her heavy arm up off of the hospital bed and reach for the plastic tubing. She could feel it between her fingers but couldn’t raise her arm close enough to where it actually entered her skin to pull it out.
Pinching the tube as hard as she could and holding her breath, she
pulled with all her might. She could feel the plastic slide under her skin a bit but it didn’t quite come out all the way. Brynn felt her stomach go sour at the feeling of the tubing moving under her skin but tried to swallow those feelings down. She had a job to do.
She pulled once more, this time gritting her teeth against the feeling and was rewarded with the sensation of liquid spilling from the tube onto her arm. The drug was slowly dripping from the plastic still but it no longer resided in Brynn’s vein. The tape that had kept the tube in place was now hanging off of her arm and she frantically tried to wiggle her fingers and toes to bring the feeling back into them.
The fog that she’d felt in her head almost instantly vanished the second she had pulled the IV out, and the longer she kept the drug out of her system, the more control she had over her body.
Unfortunately, it was only a few minutes before Brynn heard the elevator coming to her room.
Mustering all of the strength she possessed she re-taped the IV so that the medicine would drip behind her back onto the bed, but still look like it was attached to her arm. She pulled the pinch from her pocket and held it in her left hand which lay hidden under the blanket.
As the elevator door opened, Brynn closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, hoping she seemed like she was asleep as the Worker approached her.
The Worker, a man this time, stood over her, studying her face with his intelligent purple eyes. Brynn was disappointed that it wouldn’t be Eris she’d use the pinch on but she’d take what she could get. His cold fingers ran over the tape on her arm as if he suspected something might be off. He checked the bag, beginning to look worried and Brynn knew: it was now or never.
Pushing the small red button on the pinch she heard the same high-pitched beep she’d heard right before her world was turned upside down by the revelation that Jonah was an A.I.. The Worker was still staring down at her though now his eyes were unblinking and Brynn knew he was frozen.
She said a silent thank you to Hadlock and Rusty for inventing the wonderful device that had saved her life on two occasions now as she searched the Worker for keys or anything else she might need to get out of the room and into the facility.
Brynn located a small card on the man’s belt and quickly took it, running to the elevator door on unsteady legs. Her right foot dragged across the soft white floor as she tried to get the feeling back into her legs, hoping they wouldn’t slow her down too much.
The card she’d stolen from the Worker opened the elevator door instantly and she stepped inside, pushing a button to the floor right below hers and hoping it’d be where Ty and Jonah were kept.
When the doors opened to reveal a long white hallway, Brynn silently cursed her bad luck. She hadn’t really expected to simply find Ty and Jonah right away by pushing a button at random, but that hadn’t stopped her from getting her hopes up.
There were no Workers to be found down the hallway and Brynn half ran, half limped through the white space until she realized that it actually looked familiar to her.
She had been there before and that meant, she knew the way out.
That brought Brynn to a decision she wasn’t sure she was ready to make. Did she get herself out of the facility alone in order to bring in the full force of The Alliance to try to save Ty and Jonah? Or did she stay behind and find them herself.
One thing was certain: if she left now, she was almost positive that Eris would kill both boys purely to spite her.
Chapter 29: Alive
Brynn followed the familiar hallway as if she had walked it every day of her life. Her legs were finally functional once more and she no longer dragged her foot across the floor. Instead, she walked quietly through the space, still not sure if it was better to bring in help to find Ty and Jonah or if she should just look for them herself.
The problem with finding them on her own, she realized, was that it would only take one Worker to stop her and the pinch still had a good eight minutes of recharging to do before she could use it again.
She grasped the metal ball tightly in her hand, wishing it were powerful enough to knock out the whole facility. Brynn knew that the Worker she’d frozen would be mobile again by now, probably informing Eris of her escape and bringing down the wrath of A1 on her.
With this comforting thought in mind she continued down the hallway towards the exit she knew she’d be able to locate, still unsure of what to do.
“Brynn, stop,” Eris said from behind her.
She was a good distance away and didn’t actually look like she intended on coming any closer to the girl. Her feet were planted and her arms were crossed. Even her ever present smirk was gone, replaced by a serious look that Brynn had never seen before.
“Stay away from me or I’ll…”
“Use your little device there?” Eris guessed, nodding to the pinch that Brynn grasped for dear life.
This was all too soon. It wouldn’t be ready for another seven minutes and Brynn was pretty sure Eris was well aware of this fact. The woman could come after her right at that moment and Brynn wouldn’t stand a chance.
And yet, she stood her ground a safe distance away from Brynn. Not making any move to attack her.
And that terrified her more than anything.
“Are you really going to leave your friends in here with me, sweetheart?” Eris asked, and for the first time, Brynn couldn’t tell if her terms of endearment were sarcastic or sincere.
“I want you to give me back Ty and Jonah,” Brynn finally said, knowing she really didn’t have a bargaining chip. “I’ll tell you anything I remember. Everything I know. Just please let them go,” she pleaded, holding the pinch out in front of her like a weapon, despite the fact that it was useless in her hands.
Six minutes, she told herself, keeping a mental count of the pinch’s cool down.
“Brynn, you know I can’t do that,” Eris said evenly, taking one small step towards the girl.
Despite how nervous it made Brynn to be in the hallway alone with Eris, it was the things Eris wasn’t doing that made her more nervous.
She didn’t have Worker’s coming up the hallway behind Brynn to snatch her. She didn’t run full speed at the frail girl that she could easily break in half. She didn’t force her to do anything. And that made absolutely no sense.
Five minutes, she told herself.
“The only reason you need them is to get information out of me,” Brynn said reasonably. “So if I’m willing to give you the information freely why do you need them?”
“I need them to force the memories you can’t recall,” Eris answered matter-of-factly.
Four minutes.
“And besides Brynn, I don’t just need you for your memories,” Eris said.
She took one more almost minute step forward, inching slowly towards Brynn as if she didn’t want to spook her.
“You need information on The Alliance?” she guessed, wondering if she would really be willing to sell out her friends and their cause to keep Ty and Jonah alive.
She wanted to keep them alive, that much was certain. But she wanted to believe she could be as brave as Rachel by sacrificing what she loved for the greater good.
Three minutes.
“I don’t need information on that band of misfits,” Eris said disdainfully. “They don’t pose a threat to me.”
Brynn had known that Eris was an arrogant woman. It was probably the only weakness that would be useful to the group in bringing her down. But she hadn’t realized until that moment just how unaware she was of the threat The Alliance posed to her. She may not have thought they were a contender in her great plan, but that only proved to Brynn just how misguidedly confident in her abilities she was.
Two minutes.
“If you don’t need information on The Alliance and you don’t need my memories, then what do you need me for?” Brynn asked, afraid of what the answer might be.
Her palms were beginning to sweat around the pinch, making it slippery and difficult to hold o
n to.
“I need you to talk to someone for me,” Eris said, her eyes now intense as she watched Brynn. “They won’t respond to me no matter what I do.”
Eris almost sounded like her feelings were genuinely hurt by this fact and Brynn wondered why in the world Eris would think this silent person would speak to Brynn instead of her.
One minute.
“She refuses to speak to me. She always has so I’m not surprised, but now that I have you, I think she’ll be a little more willing to cooperate.”
Brynn could feel the seconds ticking away. It was like an internal clock counting down to the time when she’d be able to use the pinch again. She only had half a minute to go and she was sure she’d be able to keep Eris talking for that short amount of time.
The Angel took another step towards her, coming just within range of the pinch and suddenly Brynn realized why she had kept her distance in the first place. Eris hadn’t known about the cool down time on the pinch. She had just thought she’d distracted Brynn well enough to keep her from pushing the button.
Brynn moved her thumb to the red button, counting the seconds in her head methodically as Eris stared at her.
“Who do you need me to talk to?” Brynn asked, more to keep Eris distracted than out of any actual interest.
There was absolutely no one in the world she’d let distract her from her mission of finding Jonah and Ty.
“I need you to speak to Rachel for me,” Eris said finally, saying the one thing that caused the pinch to drop from Brynn’s now limp hands.
And that was when she smelled the sugar.
Acknowledgments
First off I have to give a huge shout out to my amazing lit family at CHBB for… well… everything really. You guys always have my back and it’s wonderful! Thank you to Heather, Lisa, and Mikki for all of your input and for helping me figure out how in the world to describe that stupid hallway. Ashlee, again, I’m sorry for what happened in this book, but thank you for reminding me that the mafia doesn’t exist in this world and so, in fact, I can’t make a reference to them. That was close! Jackie Hicken, you know who you are and you know what you did… which was everything. You always do everything. And I wouldn’t have finished a single book without you. Amber, Bennett, Hadlock, Royter, Tate, and Devey, thanks for letting me use you guys. If I end up killing any of you, it’s nothing personal. Family, thank you for encouraging me and being the best family I could ever ask for. Husband, thank you for just being the best in general and putting up with me and all of my craziness. And thank you to my Heavenly Father, for the gift of writing that I would be so lost without.