She stumbled down the halls until she found herself in front of the Observatory door. Her arms stung, but when she looked at them, they were only badly scraped and not bleeding much. If she hurried, she might make it to the nearest Grafter before anyone she knew saw her. The trouble was, she didn’t even know which quad Jake had taken her to. Or which level, for that matter.
She looked around for clues, but everything looked the same as in her own quad. Her hands felt damp and sticky. She looked down and gasped at the blood covering her trembling hands. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the cool steel wall.
She tried not to think about Jake, but she couldn’t get the picture of his fiery, verdant eyes out of her head. She’d been electrified by his fingers in her hair and the heat of his body against hers. The intensity of that moment had scared her more than his insanity did.
He’d mumbled something about pendants and killing his brother. My God! He’s a killer! I have to turn him in. I’ll tell Oren to contact Ava—
The sound of the door opening roused her. Oren stepped into the hall from the Observatory, and his blond hair hung over one eye in a greasy wave. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved or showered in days.
Miya’s pulse jumped when his eyes fell on her. Wide, dark circles of surprise, which quickly narrowed. She slid her hands behind her back to hide her bloody fingers.
“There you are.” Standing this close to her, she could see Oren’s eyes were bloodshot and sunken with dark circles under them. “You shouldn’t be out here alone.”
Her chest squeezed. “I…I…” She swallowed. “I just went for a walk.”
“Miya, you’re sick.” Oren put his hands on her shoulders to draw her closer, but still kept her well within the medically accepted boundaries. “I have something that will make you feel better.”
“No…I’m fine…I’m…I’m heading back to my room now.” She started to move away, but his grip on her shoulders was firm. The tiny lines in the corners of his eyes deepened with his frown.
“Stop fighting me, Miss Thorne. This is for your own good.”
Right. Where have I heard that before?
Oren let go of her to take an injector out of the front pocket of his lab coat, then grabbed her arm above the elbow roughly. Her skin pinched between his fingers.
She sucked in a breath as he used his teeth to turn the cap. Click. The needle glinted in the corridor lights just before it entered her.
CHAPTER 27
Miya
Whispers rose and fell with the light that pinched her eyes behind her fluttering eyelids, then faded when she gave in to the darkness again. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but when she finally woke, her fingertips tingled and her throat burned. She tried speaking, but her lips were fused shut with dried spit. Her tongue stuck to the inside of her mouth, too dry to moisten anything.
“How much do you think she remembers?”
A woman’s voice…familiar.
“I’m uncertain.”
A pause. Miya strained to hear more past the buzzing pain in her head.
“Did she recognize him?”
“I don’t know, Ava.”
A heavy sigh. “I should’ve known this would be harder than it seemed.”
A tickly prickle rose in the back of Miya’s throat. Water. She swallowed the tickle.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Do whatever you need to, Kael. Just don’t let me down.”
“I won’t let you down, Ava. I’ll find him and bring him to you like I promised. We have a deal if you don’t hurt her.”
“I’ve always known you had a weakness for Laelite girls, Kael.”
The tickle clawed its way up Miya’s throat again. She squeezed her eyes shut against it. Don’t cough.
The familiar hiss of a door opening distracted her. Footsteps. Then a third voice. Male. Louder than a whisper, yet still hushed. It seemed very familiar. She tried to peek through her lashes, but they too seemed sealed shut.
“He’s gone.”
“What? I thought she led you to him. How could he get away?” Ava’s voice. Angry. Her volume escalated.
Silence. Then, “Find him!”
The door hissed again and silence ensued. Tears leaked out of Miya’s eyes from holding back the cough. Her throat spasmed and the cough escaped. The violence of it made her pounding head feel like it was being split in two. She rolled onto her side and drew her knees up.
“Water…here, Miss Thorne. Drink some water.”
Oren?
She managed to open her crusty eyes and found Oren leaning over her, concern written on his face. He helped her sit up and held the water canister to her lips. Her mouth and tongue felt numb. Water dribbled down her chin and soaked into the thin bedsheet across her lap. When Oren turned to set the water down, she glanced around the room. She looked at Raine’s bed, which remained exactly how she’d left it: rumpled, with her pillow on the floor. No one else was in the room with Oren.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Who’s Kael?”
Oren shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”
Miya studied him to see if he was lying. His face was deadpan. “It’s nothing.” She glanced at the small table she shared with Raine and counted five orange-capped injectors.
She felt Oren’s eyes on her.
“Those injections…” She pointed to them.
Oren nodded. “Your antibiotics. Which you haven’t been taking. That’s why you haven’t recovered yet.” He continued to study her. “You were talking in your sleep. You mentioned the name Jake. Someone you know?”
Miya shook her head. “He’s…no one.” Why couldn’t she bring herself to tell him?
“Are you sure?” He touched her hand. The gesture was so remarkably unlike Oren because it bordered on breaking the rules. She lifted her eyes to his.
“If you’re still dreaming unprescribed dreams, I can bring Ava in to do some more tests. You need to rest, Miya Thorne. If you don’t think that’s possible, then I can give you something that will help.”
“I’ll rest.”
“Good.” Oren smiled in a way that forced her to relegate Jake to where he belonged: the danger zone. She should report him to Oren, but every time she opened her mouth to do so, the mark on her chest grew painfully hot and stole the words away.
She reached for an injection tube and turned it over and over in her palm. There was no label. Nothing to identify it. She tossed it aside and grabbed another. Same thing. The remaining three tubes were all unmarked.
She looked Oren in the eye. “What if I accidentally took Tribond? Could it hurt me?”
Oren frowned. “Tribond is a combination of three drugs: a stimulant, a relaxant and hallucinogen. I’m concerned how you’d think you could accidentally take it.”
“I…I didn’t mean I did…I just wondered about it.”
Oren licked his lips. She watched his Adam’s apple bob when he swallowed. “With the proper dosage, Tribond jump-starts the brain when there’s been a disconnection between the mind and the implant. It rewires everything. Is there something you’re concerned about?”
Jake’s wrist was bandaged. He mentioned a problem with his implant. Maybe he’d been taking Tribond and gotten confused. She sighed. She should stop making excuses for his erratic behavior. Ava said he was dangerous.
But do I really trust Ava over Jake? Or even Oren?
“Miss Thorne?”
“Huh?” She blinked. Oren was standing near her bed, scratching his chin. “I was asking if you’d had any progress with finding Jacob Hamilton.” He came toward her and bent down until he was face to face with her.
Miya breathed slowly in then out as she studied the tiny red capillaries in his eyes.
“No, sorry.” She concentrated on breathing. In. Out. Don’t look away. Make him believe you.
Oren’s brows furrowed. He straightened and wiped his palms on his pants. “When you fainted
in the corridor, I brought you here. You had blood on your hands.”
She held her eyes steadily on his and hoped that he couldn’t hear the violent thumping of her heart.
I didn’t faint. You drugged me.
“Yeah, I was on my way to the Grafter.” She kept her eyes on his. “I cut myself on a sharp edge of a stupid scanner.” At least that’s the truth.
Oren nodded. “I see. We fixed your injuries with a portable Grafter.” He sighed. “Well, if you come into contact with anyone suspicious, let me know immediately.”
She nodded and looked away, suddenly afraid that it wasn’t only Jake who could hear her thoughts.
Oren rocked on his heels, his hands behind his back. “He killed someone.” He moved closer to her until his knees touched the edge of her bed. “He’s very dangerous. We believe he might try to contact you. If he does, whatever you do, don’t engage him.”
Miya kept her breathing even to quell the hammering of her heart. She picked at the hem of her sheet. “He’s Leadership, right? So why do you need me? Why can’t you track him using Central Control?”
Oren blinked at her like it was a silly question.
“We have no access to him. His implant was stolen from recycling. The implant would’ve connected to his brain and might’ve caused him to think like Jacob Hamilton used to, but the real Jacob Hamilton is dead and no longer has an active biofeed.”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “If you can’t access him or track him, that means you’re using me as bait. You don’t just think he’ll contact me, you’re hoping he will so you can catch him. Right? I’m just bait to you?”
Oren shuffled his feet. His features softened. “Miss Thorne, you’re our best chance at finding him. Ava seems to think he’s become…infatuated with you.”
Miya sucked in a breath.
He smiled, but it seemed stiff and forced. The upturn of his mouth looked unnatural on him since he didn’t do it often.
“Don’t worry. You’re perfectly safe. We’ll have someone guarding you at all times.”
The crisp afternoon room lights slanted across his face and illuminated his eyes. There was no humor there.
“Once you catch him, what will happen to him?”
“He will be executed immediately.”
Miya clenched her fists. “Without finding out the truth?”
Oren shook his head, his blond hair fell across his eyes. He pushed it back with his hand and fixed his dark eyes on hers. “We know the truth.”
“You know what Ava told you. But is that the truth? Leadership can’t stop people from thinking for themselves, and these implants don’t stop people from lying. Just like I know you’ve been lying to everyone for years. About me.”
Oren just stood there. His face was expressionless, watching her while she sat on her bed, twisting her sheet around her fingers.
“Why’d you do it? Why would you act like you could scan my biofeed when you knew I didn’t have one?” she finally asked in a voice thick with emotion. “Was it because Raine asked you to? Did she make a deal with you?”
“Miss Thorne, I don’t know who Raine is. And I make deals with no one.”
Miya shivered like she’d swallowed a bowlful of crushed ice. “What do you mean you don’t know Raine? She’s my roommate. She works in the lab with me. She—”
“I don’t make deals, but I keep promises.” He held his wrist up to the door scanner. The door slid open and Oren stepped into the corridor without a backward glance.
CHAPTER 28
Miya
Bang, bang, bang!
Miya jumped. The room echoed with the resonating sound of something banging on her door. She swiveled her head toward the sound, immediately regretting the sudden movement when pain sliced through her head. She touched the spot where Oren injected her, which sent another wave of pain coursing through her.
Bang! Bang!
“Who’s there?” She waited a second, and when no one answered, she threw the sheets off then swung her legs over the side of the bed. Vertigo sent her stomach reeling again. She waited for the room to still before placing her slippered feet carefully on the ground. Every step seemed weighted. Her left hand shook too much for the scanner to get a clear reading, so she steadied her wrist with her right hand.
The panel flashed green.
The door hissed open.
“Who—”
Someone rushed into the room and grabbed her painfully by her shoulders. She found herself being propelled backwards with her face smashed into their chest. A strangled scream erupted from her, muffled by a mouthful of the person’s shirt.
“Sh!” A hot hiss in her ear.
Her body slammed into the wall, crushed beneath someone’s hard chest. She felt a rapid heartbeat pounding against her own chest. She heard her door slide shut, leaving her alone with her captor.
She struggled to free her hands enough to push the person away.
The person stepped back and Miya looked up into Jake’s wide eyes. The muscles in his neck tightened. She watched the tiny tattoo below his right ear move with the motion.
“What did he do to you?” His voice was hoarse.
She closed her eyes as the room swirled again.
“I just saw him leave. What did he do to you?” The heat of his hands on her shoulders seared her.
“Nothing.” The word came out small. She pushed against him, but he only gripped her harder, digging his fingers into her.
“Look at me!” He shook her.
She slowly lifted her eyes to look into Jake’s steady green ones. With one hand he flicked her hair away from her face, and his eyes fell on her neck.
“He switched injectors.” Without waiting for her response, he spun around and whisked the four remaining tubes off her table. With a sharp snap, he broke off each orange cap and emptied the contents of the injectors on the floor. She stared at the pool of thick, yellow liquid spreading across the white tile.
Her insides clenched.
“Jake! What are you doing? I need those!” she screamed at him, then grabbed the sides of her head as pain sliced through her brain.
Jake glowered at her. “What did Oren say to you?”
She dropped her hands to her sides. Her knees trembled and she sagged against the wall.
“Tell me!”
“He didn’t say anything! He only came to check on me and give me an antibiotic injection.”
Jake pushed his hands into his hair. The veins in his neck bulged, their blue color standing out against the paleness of his skin. “You have to trust me, Miya. Listen to me!” He sat on the edge of her bed, his feet straddling the puddle of yellow liquid. The sweet smell burned her nose and she gagged.
“He switched out the injectors I left you! He’s messing with your mind!”
You’re messing with my mind. She dropped her hands and slid down the wall. “You shouldn’t be here.” Her words were weak. What was wrong with her? Why didn’t she have any conviction to shove him out of her room? He was Leadership, for God’s sake!
Jake stood. “You can’t trust him. Please believe me. He must’ve figured out I’ve been trying to give you back your memory.”
My memory? There’s nothing wrong with my bloody memory. She looked up at his wild eyes and messed-up hair. The damp spots on his white shirt where he’d sweat through. It’s my heart that’s the problem.
“Just trust me, Miya.” His voice softened. Surely he heard her thoughts.
She shook her head and held her hands over her ears. “Stop it, Jake! Get out of here before I turn you in.”
Jake came to her in two strides. He yanked her hands away from her ears and pointed to the broken injectors on the floor. “Whatever Oren told you, it’s not the truth. Look! That drug is messing with you. Those drugs will make you believe whatever he says!” He started pacing. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“I do know!” A roaring sound filled her head. “I know who
you are!”
The room got very still. The only sound she heard was the thudding of her own heartbeat.
She swallowed hard, barely daring to breathe.
Jake stared at her. “You what?”
She looked down at the puddle on the floor. “I said I know who you are.” She drew her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. She glanced up at him. His features had softened. The feral streak she’d seen moments ago had gone, replaced by a magnetic force that pulsed from him, radiating like heat waves and making the tiny hairs on her arms stand on end.
“Tell me, then. Who am I?”
Tears burned her eyes. She blinked them away. “You’re not Leadership. You killed a man, stole his implant, and—”
“I didn’t steal anyone’s implant. I woke up and couldn’t remember anything.” The huskiness of his voice stole her breath and spiked her pulse.
His jaw flexed. Jake’s eyes didn’t leave her face.
“Raine helped me. She gave me Tribond. It helped me remember.”
Miya dug her fingernails into her palms. “What? You’ve seen Raine? Where is she?”
Jake held his hands up. “I don’t know. She told me she’d meet me every day until I recovered, but the last time I saw her was a few days ago. I haven’t seen her since.”
“Did you…did you hurt her?”
“No! I’d never hurt her. And I didn’t mean to kill that man. It just…it just happened, and I never stole anyone’s implant.” He rubbed his thumb across his bandaged wrist.
After several long moments, when Jake made no motion to leave, she got up and walked weakly to the door.
“You need to leave now.” When she lifted her wrist to the scanner, Jake grabbed her arm with his left hand. The bandage around his wrist was dirty and torn. His fingers were firm around hers. His face was inches from hers. His spicy scent filled the air as he moved his mouth close to her ear and whispered through her hair.
“I need you.”
She looked up at him. His eyes held hers without a tremble. A strand of her dark red hair had caught on his whisker-studded cheek. She reached up to brush it away without thinking, her fingers lingering on his skin for a moment longer than they should have. She’d never intentionally touched Leadership. What was she thinking? That was the problem. She wasn’t thinking at all.
She could feel the heat of his body and the warmth of his breath against her cheek.