The Death Code

  My little sister Peri, stolen. My brother Koi and my father, gone.

  My mother . . . a murderer.

  And suddenly the truth comes back to me, I remember exactly where I am. What I am.

  I am a prisoner of the Initiative, with a connection to the Murder Complex in my brain. I came here to destroy the Motherboard, shut the system down for good, until I discovered that I am the only one who can end the Murder Complex. If I die, the system dies along with me.

  That is the only way.

  I gave myself up so that Zephyr could escape and set my family free. I wanted to die fighting the Patients, die so that the Murder Complex would die, too. A brave death, something my father would be proud of.

  My plan failed. My mother escaped, my partner Sketch is nowhere to be found. The last time I saw her, she was bleeding out, close to death.

  I look around the room at the dirty walls of the cell, the ceiling tiles overhead, now patched with bars that weren’t there before. The details fall into place.

  I am stuck inside of the very same room that holds the very same cell where my mother was once kept.

  Now I am a prisoner, behind enemy lines.

  And I am completely on my own.

  CHAPTER 5

  ZEPHYR

  Lark’s voice is in my head.

  This is the Murder Complex.

  I reach for a vision of Meadow, her lips against mine, her calloused hands on my shoulders. I’m angry that I’m not with her. I try to fight the system, try to force my way out of it.

  I have flashes of here, and now. The rain falling from the sky, splashing onto my face.

  And then I am sucked away again, back into the Murder Complex, unaware of what I’m doing. Where I’m going.

  Back and forth, in and out, and I can’t get free, can’t fight it.

  But then I remember the words that Rhone told me, weeks ago, see flashes of memories, us hiding out in the Graveyard, practicing. My body, chained to a steam tower, screaming at the world.

  You can choose your victims, Zero. Just channel the power of the system. If you can’t fight it without Meadow, then use it to your advantage. Bend it to your will.

  I have to kill, feel the need and want deep down in my soul. I can’t stop the Murder Complex inside. But I can angle it, turn it around.

  Now I can choose my victim. I can be aware of my surroundings. I can focus and choose who to kill.

  I imagine I’m a boy again, standing in the mirrored room in the Leech Headquarters where Lark used to work with me. I picture the Motherboard is there with me, a giant screen of numbers and codes and lines, beating in time with Meadow’s heart.

  “I choose my own victims now,” I say to the screen.

  It flashes bright red. Catalogue Numbers flash by, but they’re all citizens. And this time, I want Leeches.

  I try to change the numbers. Beg the system to give me someone I really want. It fights back against me, and I hear Lark’s voice again, commanding me to follow orders.

  But her orders are to kill, destroy, no escaping, no turning back. As long as my night ends in blood and bones.

  “I choose my own victims,” I say again. I shake the vision away, come back to the here and now.

  I whirl around, look for Lark.

  She’s gone, somewhere in the trees. Her blood trail disappears in the shadows of night. She won’t resurface again, not after I’ve come this close.

  I run toward the city instead. People sprint past me, heading for the shadows. They don’t know that there’s no place to hide. If a Patient wants to find someone . . . we will.

  We always will.

  Weeks ago I’d have gone after anyone in front of me. Innocents. But tonight, I’m going to do what Meadow would do.

  Take out the Leeches. I grit my teeth. Focus, hard, until I taste blood in my mouth. “I . . . choose . . . the Leeches,” I hear myself say. And then I feel the freedom. I feel the system release a part of me, the part that begs to listen to its every order. The release is only for a second. A lightness in my skull, like a breath of fresh air.

  But it’s enough, and it’s like I flip a switch in my head. The hunger for killing citizens becomes a hunger for Leeches, and suddenly the Murder Complex agrees.

  The train rattles past. I leap, grab a hold, and hang on tight. It drops me off in front of the Rations Hall, right in the middle of the Shallows. I roll to my feet, then run for the alley.

  Kill. Destroy. No escaping. No turning back.

  There’s a Leech locking the door, probably some ChumHead who came to steal rations for himself. Like he doesn’t have enough already. Kill, my brain tells me. Obey.

  I’m silent. A predator. I pick up a piece of pipe, broken on the cracked pavement.

  Then I slink up behind him, a shadow in the night, and thrust it through his back, so hard it breaks the skin. Pierces his black heart. The guy drops, and I know I’ve won.

  I stoop down and grab the rifle from the Leech’s lifeless body.

  Purge the Earth.

  This is the Murder Complex.

  I can’t stop. I have to kill. I have to spill blood.

  I turn and run down the alley, past two citizens huddled on the ground. Too obvious. The Leech Compound is just ahead. Stupid, to think they’re safe.

  I stop outside the gates. Touch my hands to them, and I’m shocked backward, blown to the ground like a bullet from a gun.

  I stand up, body wobbling, but I don’t feel pain. Not when the Murder Complex has a hold of me. I’m strong. Stronger than ever.

  I aim the rifle through the gates, look through the scope until the red dot lands right on the second-floor window. I breathe out. Steady. My heart rate slows. I squeeze the trigger.

  The window shatters, and I keep shooting. Lights shut off, exploding from fired rounds. Screams come from the inside. I keep shooting, until the trigger clicks beneath my finger. I’m out of ammo.

  I drop the rifle.

  “You can’t control me!” I scream, even though I’m wrong. They still control me; I just have a new way of dealing with it. “Screw all of you!”

  I’m seeing Meadow in my head, drenched in blood as we tried to escape the Leech Headquarters together, and it makes me go crazy. I beat the fence with my palms. It blows me backward again, and I can see Leeches pouring out of the building, sprinting toward me. A part of my mind whispers that I need to run, hide. But I shake it away. I snarl, ready for the fight, needing it.

  Someone tackles me from behind. I feel something wet, over my mouth. I try to get away, but there are too many hands, and then there’s the feeling of . . . falling.

  Slowly.

  I sink backward, the world disappearing into a funnel of black, until all I can see is a girl’s face hovering over me. Dex, Rhone’s little sister, the only light in my world right now.

  “Too easy,” Dex says. “Take him.”

  My eyes close, and I’m gone.

  CHAPTER 6

  MEADOW

  My father taught me how to be strong.

  He gave me a lifetime of lessons in how to kill with a hardened heart. Peri and Koi and Zephyr taught me how to love, how to reel myself back in, to be soft again.

  It is my mother’s influence I will rely on now.

  Because she taught me how to lie.

  “Tell us where the Resistance is,” the Interrogator says. He stands above me in my cell, pacing back and forth, arms clasped behind his back.

  He has been doing this for twenty-one days.

  I have marked the time with twenty-one gashes on my calf, using my fingernails to carve a bleeding line into my skin with every day that passes. Twenty-one perfect, solid scars. They remind me of how long I have stayed strong.

  Today, the Interrogator’s hands are clean. Soon they will be stained from my blood again. A part of me wants it. I deserve to be tortured. I deserve to feel pain, for messing up, losing my family when they were so close. I remember Peri, screaming for me as an Initiative soldier dragged
her away. I remember the fear in her eyes, the way she looked so small. So helpless. The memory hurts more than the torture ever could.

  Pain is good, my father’s voice tells me. Use it to become stronger.

  I look up at the Interrogator and give him my coldest smile. “The Resistance?” I ask. The Interrogator nods. I think of the Cave, the underground facility where the Resistance is hiding out.

  We failed to destroy the Motherboard, because I was the Protector. I am the Protector, and I feel it inside of me like a curse. It is because I still live that the Murder Complex lives on, too.

  I think of Zephyr, his eyes the color of the outside. The tiny glimpse of freedom I saw as Peri was carted away. I hope Zephyr has gone back to the Resistance. I hope they are working up a new plan to take down the Initiative. Then I hope he will escape the Shallows, go and save my family from the Ridge up north.

  I gave myself up for the cause.

  I will give nothing else away today, or tomorrow, or however long they keep me here.

  “I don’t know who the Resistance is,” I say. “But if there is a Resistance, it sounds like you have bigger problems than interrogating a sixteen-year-old girl.”

  “Oh, you’re much more than that.” The Interrogator grins. “And I guarantee, you’ll spill all of your secrets in due time.”

  He turns to a metal table. There are all kinds of devices on it. Things that should be in a hospital, not in a dirty cell in the belly of the Initiative Headquarters. Sharp things that I don’t want anywhere near me.

  “Do you know, Miss Woodson, what the heretics fork method is?”

  I do not speak.

  “No, you wouldn’t. Uneducated, as all the Shallows citizens are. Worthless mutts without any real importance to this dying world.”

  “Is that how you justify the mass murder of thousands of innocent people?” I ask.

  He ignores me. “This is the heretics fork,” he says, holding up a metal fork with two red prongs on each end. A collar is attached to the center of the fork, as if it were made for being strapped around someone’s neck. “A beautiful device, used all the way back in the Medieval Era. Do you know what that is, Miss Woodson?”

  “Does it matter?” I cannot look away from the fork. The prongs are as sharp as knives.

  “Everything matters,” the Interrogator says. “You see, this clever little invention is something your mother would’ve loved to use. I’ll show you how it works, in just a moment.” He holds it up to the light, tilts his head. “Unless you want to tell me where your mother is?”

  “My mother is dead,” I say. I look right into his cold, black eyes.

  “That, my dear, is where you are wrong.”

  I refuse to look away. He continues.

  “We know about your mother’s fail-safe. If she dies, the Initiative dies, too.” He paces back and forth, shiny black boots on pale gray pavement. “Just as we know about the connection in your brain. We’re working to reverse the connection your mother has to the system. But your connection, Miss Woodson, is something beautiful.”

  “So you know that you have to keep me alive.” I hide my fear from him. I refuse to be weak. “How long are you going to torture me, Interrogator? How long are you going to try to make me scream, beg for you to stop until I give you the information you want?” I swallow, then laugh the way my mother would have. “It’s been far too long. I haven’t bent. I haven’t broken. You can burn me with fire and pierce me with knives, but I will never tell.”

  “Our doctors are working on a surgery,” he says. “We might not be able to remove the connection from your brain. . . . Your mother’s work was beautiful. Brilliant.” His eyes glitter, like he worships my mother. I imagine most of the Initiative does, in a way. “But in due time, Miss Woodson, we might be able to control you. Patient Zero, as you may well know, could use a perfect counterpart. You are in our top group of candidates.”

  I stop breathing. Stop feeling fear.

  Now it is only hate.

  He kneels down in front of me and puts his hand on my cheek. I will not flinch. I will not show weakness. “They said you were a strong one, and you’ve proven them all right.” He taps the tip of my nose with the fork. It’s cold. “This method isn’t for you.”

  The Interrogator stands, lifts his arm to his wrist before he speaks again. “Bring her in.”

  Cold sweat trickles its way down my back. I wait, and as minutes pass, I hear commotion outside of the room. A voice shouting, and the sound of Initiative boots on hard ground.

  The door outside of my cell swings open, and two guards drag a hooded, writhing girl into the room.

  “Just wait till I get my hands on you, you fluxing ChumHeads!”

  I recognize that voice. I haven’t heard it in . . .

  I press my face to the bars as they rip the hood from her head, and the sight of her, alive, is enough to bring a smile to my face.

  It’s Sketch.

  CHAPTER 7

  ZEPHYR

  When I come to, it’s dark.

  And wherever I am, it smells like crap.

  The Graveyard.

  I sit up. My head wobbles like crazy. I have flashes of what I think are memories from my time under the Murder Complex. Lark’s laugh, her wild eyes. Blood on my hands, a trigger squeezed, a scream splitting the night.

  Somewhere in the distance I hear voices, a twang and a smack that sort of sounds like someone throwing knives. Then footsteps, coming toward me.

  I lie back down and pretend like I’m still out of it, because I don’t want to talk right now. I don’t want to explain myself.

  Someone flips on a lantern.

  “You can stop pretending,” a voice says. It’s light and airy, a young girl. Dex.

  I groan and open my eyes. Dex has blonde hair, in dreadlocks that hang to her shoulders. She’s small but strong, and she might be half insane. She’s several years younger than me; maybe fourteen at the most. And she has two different colored eyes. One blue like Talan’s, one green, like mine.

  Dex sits down next to me and sets the lantern right by my head. It’s too bright.

  “Get that thing out of here,” I groan.

  “So the kamikaze awakens,” Dex says. She bites her bottom lip, tilts her head sideways. “You know, I warned Rhone that you weren’t ready to go out so close to the Dark Time alone. You think you’ve got a hold on the system, Zephyr, but you’re wrong. You’re getting weaker, the longer you’re away from Meadow.” She sighs, cracks her knuckles. “Ah, whatever. You’re back to normal now, I guess. It’s all in the eyes.”

  I’ve been living with Dex for weeks and it only now hits me that she reminds me of Talan. A mouth that just won’t quit. “Where’s Rhone?” I ask. My head feels heavy. “I need to talk to him.”

  I can see now that I’m back in what we call the Shack. Rounded tunnel walls, water dripping down the sides. The awful smell of sewage. And in the distance, the sounds of the Graveyard. Seagulls cawing, the hisses and clicks of cockroaches, and sometimes, faraway screams.

  I relax. At least I’m safe. For now.

  “How did you find me?” I ask.

  Dex smiles. “I’m always watching you, Zephyr.”

  I laugh. If anyone else said something so creepy, I’d be freaked out of my mind. But Dex is just . . . Dex. There’s something sort of comforting, something Talan-like, about the crazy side of this little girl. It shows up at random and usually inappropriate times. She’s the comic relief in the middle of such a dark, screwed-up world.

  Dex points beside me, on the concrete floor, where there’s a half-eaten chunk of bread. I scoop it up and devour the thing. It’s dry and it tastes terrible, but as soon as it’s gone I want more.

  “Anyways . . .” Dex says, giggling at me, “I’ll get Rhone.”

  “I’m already here,” a guy says from the shadows. He comes closer to the light. Black hair. Piercing blue eyes. Solid Leech-like shoulders.

  “Rhone,” I say, and I try to stand bu
t my legs buckle. Dex helps me back down, pats my head like I’m her pet dog. “I controlled it. I finally got to choose my victim, like we’ve been practicing.”

  Rhone chuckles under his breath, runs a hand through his dark hair. “Yeah, that’s great and all, Zero, but you chose the entire Leech Compound as your victim.”

  “I . . . what?”

  I try to piece together what happened last night, but it’s all fragments. That’s something that will probably never change. I think I remember. . . .

  “Lark,” I whisper. “She triggered it a second time on me. It was like she used some sort of remote trigger on me. Some sort of phrase or something.”

  Rhone nods, scratches his chin, and in reality that means he’s thinking, Yeah, okay, Zero. Suuuure.

  Dex giggles again. “It’s lucky we found you before the Leeches did. I wasted my last ounce of chloroform on your sorry self, you know.”

  “How did you even get that?” I ask. Then I remember Lark again, our encounter on the beach. “Did you find Lark?”

  Rhone shakes his head. “I would have. But your little episode sort of took the lead on the mission, Zero.” He shrugs. “You should rest. We’ll regroup later today.”

  He’s wrong.

  I don’t need to rest at all. I have a rescue mission to plan. I have Leeches to kill, and Lark, the creator of the system, to find.

  “We have one week left,” I whisper, as Rhone turns to leave.

  “Actually, we have six days,” Dex corrects me.

  Rhone throws her a look that could kill.

  I think back to weeks ago, when Meadow was first lost to me. I barely made it back to the Resistance, to their Headquarters underground, with a gaping hole in my head. Dex, and the nanites in my system, nursed me back to health, and when I was ready, I recounted everything that happened inside of the Leech building.

  How our partner, Sketch, was left behind, bleeding out. How Lark escaped, and is nowhere to be found. How Talan died. The way the light in her eyes went out, the way she shouted her daughter’s name with her very last breath.

  But I held one detail back.