“Harrison!” Destiny shouts. He looks back to find her clinging to the top rung, her feet dangling precariously below her. The Destroyer’s fist is pinched around her ankle, pulling her off the ladder.
Without thinking, Harrison launches himself down the ladder feet-first. Although it’s like kicking a metal wall, the impact sending painful shivers through his feet and up his legs, the Destroyer is knocked loose, falling under the strength of Harrison’s jump and the raw power of the earth’s gravitational pull.
If judged by experts, their combined landing would likely earn them no more than a two out of ten, the Destroyer’s back colliding awkwardly on the top step while Harrison’s momentum carries him headfirst into a harrying roll that sends him sprawling down the steps. Just like during the many falls he’s taken from his hoverboard, he protects his head with his arms, letting the rest of his body take the brunt of the collision. Each step feels like a hammer blow to a different part of his body—his shoulder, his hip, his knee. He cries out, but doesn’t lose his composure, maintaining his head-protected position.
What feels like a ten-minute fall really lasts about two seconds. The final landing snaps his jaw shut with a clack, leaving his teeth sore and achy, seeming to complete his growing list of injuries.
“Harrison?” Destiny says, a distinct question in there somewhere.
The Destroyer groans.
Harrison groans, too, pushing to his feet. He doesn’t quite feel alive, but not dead either. Undead, like a zombie, he lurches up the stairs, one hand on the wall to keep his balance, the flashes of light seeming to spin under his feet.
Step by staggering step he reclaims the landing, adding an angry kick to the Destroyer’s head, which is lolling around. If not for Destiny’s initial blow to his eye—which has seemed to significantly weaken him—Harrison knows he wouldn’t have had a chance in this fight. As it is, however, the Destroyer doesn’t fight back, just lies there like a crumpled tin can. Harrison kicks him again, and again, and again, dimly scared by the irrefutable fact that each and every kick makes him feel slightly better. He doesn’t stop until Destiny calls to him, icy fear in her tone, which is higher-pitched than normal.
The Destroyer is silent and motionless, and Harrison wonders how to check whether a cyborg is dead. Does he even have a heart that beats? Or should he be checking for electrical currents and spinning gears? Is there a box he can open up to reveal a circuit board? Cringing, he feels around his neck for a pulse, trying not to look at the bloody and burned one-eyed face. He can’t seem to find skin, just metal. Destiny calls out again, and this time Harrison responds. “Give me a minute,” he whispers. Ignoring the pain shooting through his limbs, he bends down and deadlifts the Destroyer, heaving him down the steps headfirst.
After the raucous and repeated clattering of metal on stone, all goes silent.
Harrison climbs the ladder, accepting Destiny’s offered hand near the peak. This time, all it takes is both of them pushing together to get the cover to swing upwards and over its equilibrium, falling away and ringing out with a resounding metallic shiver. Gentle snowflakes float aimlessly through the opening.
Destiny pulls herself up and out without any assistance from Harrison, who doesn’t think he has any strength left to offer her anyway. She helps pull him up and together they replace the metal disk, which Harrison realizes is really a manhole cover.
As he sits shaking with relief with Destiny standing beside him, her hand draped casually on his shoulder, he takes in his surroundings. An empty snow-covered street. Deserted, save for a single black aut-car that seems to be waiting for someone. The Destroyer, most likely. The fact that there’s still snow on the ground means this street is an old one, unimportant, without the snow-melting technology running through it.
“Mars could be back any second,” Destiny says. “We have to get out of here.”
The thought of running, or even walking, or even standing, makes Harrison groan.
“Quit being a baby,” Destiny says, but when he looks up to meet her gaze, she’s smiling. Somehow, she’s smiling, her rich dark skin blurred by snowfall.
She helps him to his feet and he pulls her into his chest, half because he needs her support to remain standing and half because he needs her close to him, if only for a few stolen moments.
“Is he…” Destiny says, her voice muffled against his coat.
“I hope so,” Harrison says into her hair. He kisses her forehead, relishing the warmth of her skin on his lips. A bit of snow slides down his collar and brings icy reality back in an instant. “We have to find Benson. The Destroyer said he was going where I was going, to find his Death Match. He could be in trouble.”
Destiny nods, and he mistakes the look in her eyes for regret. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I meant that I have to find him. You’ve already done too much. I’ve already put you in too much danger. Let’s get you somewhere safe and then I’ll go find my brother.”
Destiny wrinkles her cute nose and says, “Fat chance, fly boy. Wherever you’re going, I’m going. I can’t let you keep screwing up without my help.”
He grins and pulls her in for another hug. “We screw up better than most,” he says.
“Screwing up like champs,” she says.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The safe house feels anything but safe to Benson, especially with Minda and Simon strapped to tables and being worked on by medics.
Especially with all the blood.
Especially with Boris Decker’s broken body grinning at Benson in his mind. I’m invincible, he says, over and over again.
“But you died,” Benson whispers, watching through the window as the guards patrol the area around the building. The building is disguised as a biolab research facility containing highly toxic and dangerous materials. Both the interior and the exterior are authentic, from the beakers and work stations and microscopes to the pretend scientists who pretend to work here in the event of a random government inspection. Minda has managed to surprise Benson yet again.
I’m invincible, Boris Decker says again, and Benson wonders whether this is how his mother’s madness began. With dead people talking in her head. Or people she thought were dead. Like him. Did he whisper in his mother’s ear? I’m invincible. “You died to save us,” Benson says. “Just like Dad. Just like Luce. No one’s invincible.”
“Of course not,” Janice says, and it sounds like a remarkably unremarkable statement from a woman who is anything but unremarkable. Benson looks at his mother, remembering to be thankful for what he hasn’t lost. His mother. His brother, at least as far as he knows. As far as he hopes.
“You know a lot more than people give you credit for,” Benson says. Although he still can’t seem to reconcile the woman who raised him with the enigmatic and peculiar woman who stands next to him, maybe he doesn’t have to. Maybe they can be different people and Benson can be okay with that. Perhaps he doesn’t need to understand everything she says, like he wanted to. Like he thought he needed to.
Wrapping an arm around her, he pulls her close, hugging her for real for the first time since they were reunited. For the first time since he found out she was his mother.
Janice hugs him back and whispers into his neck. “I’m spongy and no one knows it.”
Benson laughs because he gets the feeling he knows exactly what she means, despite the strangeness of her statement. Just because Janice says things differently than anyone else doesn’t depreciate the value of what she says. Her words are still important—maybe more important than anyone else’s.
“Thank you for being you,” Benson says, sweeping his mother’s unkempt hair away from her face.
“Who else would I be?” Janice says, and Benson kisses her on the forehead.
Benson’s rare moment of peace is snatched away by a commotion at the far end of the floor, past all the pretend experiments being carried out at glass tables by men and women wearing stark white lab coats. He’s been told that the faux-scientist
s are packing some serious heat underneath their big coats. For some reason that thought doesn’t make him feel any more safe.
Then he sees him and so much of the broken world seems to heal right before his very eyes. Janice lets out a soft squeal of delight and bounds in front of Benson, leading him down a convoluted path through the lab that surprisingly seems to be the fastest way to the other side. Scientists race to get out of her way, leaving the course open for Benson.
Harrison’s wearing a worn and tired smile that tells a story Benson’s not sure he wants to hear. His hands are bandaged heavily and his face bloodied and bruised, one eye so battered that it’s swollen shut. His clothes are wrinkled so badly that it’s as if Harrison’s slept in them for a week straight. Of course, that seems to be the least of his worries.
And behind him is Destiny, whose cheek is a blistery ruin in the shape of—is that a knife?
What the bot-lickin’ hell happened to these two? Benson wonders.
Janice is squeezing Harrison so tightly Benson worries she might choke him to death, but his brother doesn’t push her away. Harrison just looks over her shoulder at Benson and they share a knowing smile. Even if they come from two completely different worlds, there’s a powerful force connecting them together. And that force is their mother.
“Hey, little bro,” Harrison says.
“You’re two minutes older,” Benson reminds him, but he’s not angry at being called little. His brother can call him little a thousand times a day and it won’t bother him. So long as Harrison stays alive.
“That’s two minutes bigger and, more importantly, two minutes wiser,” Harrison says.
Benson says, “You didn’t really mean what you said about Luce.” It’s not a question, and although he doesn’t expect an answer, Harrison shakes his head.
“I wanted you to hate me for long enough to get a headstart.”
“So you could kill my Death Match.” There’s no anger in Benson’s tone like before. He knows his brother’s motives were pure, if misguided.
“You deserve a real life,” Harrison says, and Benson swears his brother’s eyes look misty in a way they’ve never looked before.
“I have a real life,” Benson says. “I have you and Mom. I have friends. Real friends.”
Harrison nods. “I think I understand better now.”
Benson says, “My Death Match is dead, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“I know,” Harrison says. “They told me.”
Janice finally releases her son and allows Benson the chance to hug Harrison. His brother holds the back of his head in a way that seems to give him strength beyond his own.
“What happened to you?” Benson says when they end their embrace. Past Harrison, Janice is hugging Destiny, who seems perfectly comfortable with it.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Harrison says. “But just now they found us at Boris Decker’s home. We went there to find you. To save you. But you’d already saved yourself.”
Benson grimaces. “No,” he says. “Minda saved me. Simon saved me. Mom saved me. Boris Decker saved me. I saved no one.”
Harrison looks at him, unblinking. “And that’s why you’re important,” he says. “You make people want to save you.”
Benson doesn’t want to think about all that, because for every time he’s been saved, someone else has died. Instead, he changes the subject. “Did you see Boris Decker?” he asks.
“No, the place was swarming with Pop Con agents,” Harrison says. “Destiny and I were lucky not to get caught. Minda’s friends found us before we got too close. I was skeptical, but they convinced us to go with them. They said you and Mom were safe.”
“We were.”
“They gave me this to give to you.” Harrison hands Benson a tattered and bloody square of fabric. “One of Minda’s friends managed to pose as a Hunter and get it during the chaos.”
Benson knows immediately what it is. A piece of Boris Decker’s white tank top. The one he was wearing when they met him. The one he was wearing when he died. There’s blood around the edges, but the center is mostly clean, save for a bloody message scrawled in blocky handwriting that’s barely legible. And yet he’s certain as to what it says:
ONE BIRTH AUTH. FOR BENSON KELLY
God, he thinks. Boris Decker might not be invincible in a literal sense, but he is invincible. For he lives on in Benson, regardless of the clear illegality of his message.
“You still aren’t a legal citizen, are you?” Harrison says.
Benson shakes his head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
His brother’s fist tightens. “It should. What happened to equilibrium? To Population Neutrality? That’s what we learned in school. A death equals a life. Like an endless circle that ensures everyone’s survival.”
He can see the frustration on Harrison’s face, in the taut lines of his body. In his old world everything was supposed to be fair. Anything that wasn’t fair could be fixed through hard work and determination. That’s what his brother tried to do today—fix Benson’s life.
“There’s no such thing as equilibrium,” Benson says. “It was always a fool’s goal. An impossible mission that would destroy more than it would fix. They’ll give the birth authorization to some couple in need, as they should.”
“But it’s yours,” Harrison says, refusing to be persuaded. “They can’t do that.”
“They can do whatever they want.”
“But the rules. The laws.”
“Can be changed. Can be twisted to suit the whims of those in power.”
Harrison continues to shake his head ceaselessly, until Destiny puts a hand on his shoulder. His body seems to relax, to melt under her gentle touch. They’ve been through something serious together—something that will forever bind them in the same way Benson was bound to Luce.
But then Harrison squirms away, shaking her off, and there’s no mistaking the pain that crosses her face.
“No,” Harrison says. “This is crap. We didn’t go through all of this for nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Benson says. “It brought you and Mom and me together. It brought us to Destiny, and Luce and I together.”
“Luce is dead,” Harrison says, his voice cold. “Because of Pop Con.”
A stab of pain hits Benson in the chest and he looks down, half-expecting to find a knife protruding from his flesh.
When he looks up, his vision is blurry. “I won’t let her death ruin her life,” he says, choking on the words. “I can be sad about it—and I am sad, unimaginably sad—but it doesn’t change the fact that knowing her was a privilege. Her life was worth something. To me. To her brother. To everyone she came in contact with.”
“You’re delusional,” Harrison says, stalking off. Destiny offers Benson an apology with her eyes, as if his brother’s behavior is somehow her responsibility, but then follows after him, lightly calling his name.
~~~
“Wait!” Destiny says behind him.
Harrison keeps walking, but slows his gait enough for her to catch up. She grabs his hand and wheels him around to face her.
Something in him breaks and he desperately wants to cry—no, needs to cry—but he bites his lip and flares his nostrils and conjures up every last memory of the Destroyer.
And. He. Doesn’t. Cry.
“It’s okay to be broken,” Destiny says. “I’m broken. Benson’s broken. Your mother is the most broken, and yet she’s an incredible woman.”
“She’s a lunatic,” Harrison says, knowing he’s lost all control of his words and emotions. But he doesn’t care. Spewing vile words about his family is who he is, right? Half of his friends only became his friends after his mom went crazy and he started making fun of her.
“You don’t mean that.”
He doesn’t, and something about the steel in Destiny’s enormous brown eyes won’t let him tell her another lie. “I don’t understand Benson at all.”
Still holding his uni
njured hand, Destiny places her other hand under his chin, cupping his face. Her touch is so tender, so right, so wanted, that it almost makes Harrison want to recoil. He doesn’t deserve even a single shred of happiness, not when his brother has been ripped open and sewn back together more times than he can count.
“You’re not supposed to understand your brother,” Destiny says. “You’re supposed to support him. You no more get to choose what happens in his life than he gets to choose what happens in yours.”
Harrison gets what she’s saying, and on paper it makes sense, but these are special circumstances. “He should want revenge. He should be angry,” Harrison says.
“And you should be sad,” Destiny says.
“I am—” The tears are there again, rising up, but he realizes they’re not sad tears. They’re angry tears, hot and fast and burning his eyes. They’re tears that make him want to hit something, to charge into the streets and dare the whole screwed up world to come out and take him on.
He blinks furiously to erase them.
He tries to explain. “You’re important to me,” he says. “I don’t know you that well, but it’s like I can feel who you are, and I know it’s someone good. Someone way, way better than me. And I’m just hoping the good parts of you might rub off on me.”
Destiny smiles and it’s a real smile and it’s beautiful. “I’ve felt the same way about you,” she says. He starts to argue, but she continues. “You’ve got plenty of good in you, too, even if you’re too screwed up to see it.”
This time, Harrison manages to smile. “You’re at least as screwed up as I am.”
“Truth,” Destiny says, but her smile fades. “Back in the cell, when I escaped—”
“Which was the most incredible thing ever,” Harrison interjects.
“Thank you,” Destiny says. “Afterwards you called me beautiful and kissed me. You were excited that we’d gotten ourselves loose and hopeful that we could escape.”