The Death Code

  I didn’t tell them what I still hold close to me now, the one thing I swore to myself I’d never tell.

  Meadow is the Protector of the Motherboard. If she dies, the Murder Complex dies, too. That’s the only way.

  “We’re running out of time,” I say.

  “I know, Zero.” Rhone sighs.

  I asked for an army, for a chance to attack the Leeches and get Meadow back.

  I remember Orion’s words. One month, she said.

  One month for what? I asked.

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. You can take some of my people. A small group, and go to the surface. Search for Lark . . . Find her and bring her to me. If you do that, I’ll have the entire Resistance help you.”

  It is her final words that still stick with me now, because I’m afraid she is right. Do me a favor, would you, Zero? Don’t screw this up.

  Now I try to stand and fall back down.

  “Rest,” Dex says. She puts her hands on my shoulders and forces me to lie down.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll rest. But once I wake up, we’re going hunting again.”

  Rhone nods. There’s that look in his eyes, the one that says he doesn’t believe it will really happen.

  And I’m starting to think he’s right.

  I fall asleep thinking of Meadow, a girl with moonlight in her eyes.

  But in my dreams, they turn a deep, bloody red.

  CHAPTER 8

  MEADOW

  The Initiative is going to torture Sketch in front of me.

  I am surprised she’s still breathing. The last time I saw her, she was unconscious on the floor of the Motherboard room, wounded from some perverse red knife my mother invented. It was supposed to make her bleed out.

  But Sketch is strong, and there is fresh skin on her arms and legs, almost as if the Initiative patched her up on purpose. To keep her alive.

  “Sketch,” I say. I am not alone after all, and seeing her is such a relief that I almost break down. I want to reach through the bars, grab her hand, feel the warmth of another person who is on my side. But I can’t. I must stay steady, and still, and pretend like this girl does not matter to me.

  They won’t hurt her if they think I don’t care.

  Right?

  “Don’t just stand there. Bring her in!” the Interrogator barks. The guards haul Sketch to her feet and drag her inside of my cell, dump her on the floor across from me. I wish I could crawl to her, but I’m bound to the bars.

  They do the same to Sketch, circling her wrists with MagnaCuffs, then attaching them to the metal bars behind her back.

  Up close, I can see how swollen her face is. I wonder if they’ve already been beating her, letting her heal, then starting it all over again.

  “Don’t tell these asshats anything,” Sketch says. She spits blood on the floor, so close to the Interrogator’s boots that I smile.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” I say.

  Sketch winks a swollen eye, and the Interrogator bursts into laughter.

  “Look at the two of you. Comrades, all the way to the end.” He snaps his fingers, and another guard scurries forward.

  “It’s warm in here, soldier,” he says. “Why don’t you turn the air down a bit?”

  The soldier nods, crosses to the wall and taps on a little screen embedded there.

  There is a beep and a hiss, and suddenly the air vent overhead turns on. Cool air blasts my face, makes me feel a little more alive.

  “Colder,” the Interrogator says. “Bring the winter to us.”

  The soldier obeys.

  For a while, the air reminds me of fall mornings on the beach, like the wind rolling in from beyond the Perimeter, raising the hair on my arms. Peri used to love the cool air.

  But then it gets colder.

  And colder.

  So cold that my teeth begin to rattle and my fingertips begin to shake. The torn, bloody rags I am wearing are not enough to keep me warm. Soon, I can see my breath forming in puffs in front of me. Sketch trembles across from me. Our eyes meet. We simply sit and stare.

  The Interrogator laughs again, claps his hands. “This is more like it, girls.” A soldier brings him a coat, and he shrugs it on over his shoulders, nestles into it and sighs. “Do you know what a Cold Cell is?”

  He looks to me, then Sketch.

  “No, I didn’t think so,” he says. “We used it back during the Fall. A simple way to break a man, when the room is so cold his blood threatens to freeze.” He makes a show of shivering, pulling the coat tighter around his body. I look away. “You’ll enjoy this tactic for the remainder of your stay.”

  I think he is going to turn and leave, but instead he pulls the heretics fork out of his coat. I prepare myself for the pain, open my heart up to it the way my father taught me to.

  But the Interrogator turns to Sketch, kneels in front of her. “I’d say I’m sorry about this, but . . . that would be a lie.”

  He grabs her by the chin, thrusts her head up so she’s staring at the ceiling, her throat fully exposed. She tries to fight him, but he’s too strong. He takes the fork, and levers it so that one end of the prongs is positioned beneath her chin, the other end pointing down, against her chest. Then he straps the collar around her throat and buckles it tight.

  “Now be a good girl, and don’t move an inch,” the Interrogator says. “Because if you do . . .” He pushes down, hard, on top of Sketch’s head. She screams as the prongs break through the skin on both ends of the fork. The Interrogator laughs, presses harder, until Sketch’s blood drips steady and bright. He looks over his shoulder at me, a snarl on his face. “You see, Miss Woodson? You see what the Initiative can do to those you care about?”

  Sketch’s eyes find mine. They are wide, full of tears that splash down onto her cheeks. She shakes her head, the movement so small I hardly catch it.

  But I know what she means.

  I take a deep breath and smile at our torturer. “She means nothing to me,” I say. “You can kill her right now, if you’d like.”

  His smile falters. He releases Sketch. Her gasps are so terrible I almost can’t take it.

  But I do. I must.

  He crosses to me. Leans down, grabs me by the hair, and pulls. I force my groan down to the pit of my stomach. “I’ll do whatever I can to hurt you,” he promises. “And you will hurt.”

  I look right into his eyes. “Go ahead. I dare you to try.”

  “We’re only just beginning,” the Interrogator says. “You’ll break soon enough.”

  He stands, and as he passes, I make a promise to myself, and Sketch.

  The second I get a chance I will kill this man with my bare hands.

  CHAPTER 9

  ZEPHYR

  The Graveyard isn’t bad in the morning.

  Sometimes, if you can get past the smell and the flies and the fact that you’re standing in the middle of a pile of crap, it’s kind of peaceful.

  Rhone and I are making our daily rounds, searching for food, items to trade.

  Before the failed mission, I came here with Meadow.

  I kissed her for the first time.

  As Rhone and I walk side by side in silence, looking for something worth gathering, it kills me. Because it’s like I can see Meadow in everything that moves.

  A little girl who practices fighting moves with her dad, like a younger Meadow.

  A boy who carries a dagger on his hip. The sunlight catches it, reminds me of how she used to flip her weapon across the tops of her fingers.

  We pass by one of the steam towers, and I swear I can actually hear her voice in my head.

  You can kiss my ass, Zephyr James.

  Stars, I miss her so much it hurts. It wasn’t supposed to end up this way. We were supposed to be together and free, and now the Leeches could be doing anything to her.

  I clench my fists and shove her face from my mind. It doesn’t do anything but piss me off right now, because a part of me hates her for what she did. The other p
art loves her even more.

  And sometimes, love really sucks.

  “There,” Rhone says when we reach the edge of the Graveyard. It’s not much, an old hunk of metal sticking out of the trash pile like an arm, but it’s sharp. We could shape it into a weapon, something Rhone is good at. He can turn anything useless into something lethal.

  And the Gravers like lethal things.

  We take it, spend a while searching for a few more bits and pieces.

  In a few hours’ time, Rhone has fastened a blade. He whirls it in his hand, slices the air with it.

  “Not bad,” I say.

  “Genius, actually,” Rhone corrects me. “Let’s go dig up some Gravers.”

  They usually only come out at night. Unless you’re crazy enough to summon them, and Dex is the perfect sort of crazy.

  We’re in the middle of the Graveyard, by one of the steam towers. Dex stands in front of me and Rhone, holding the new blade high over her head.

  “Gravers! Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Dex says, in a singsongy voice. It makes me shiver, feel like there are bugs crawling under my skin.

  “I don’t like this,” I whisper. “What if they just . . . kill us?”

  “They know things,” Rhone tells me. His fists are clenched, and he looks side to side, staring into the alleys of trash. “We’re running out of time. We need to do something drastic.”

  “Attacking the Leech Compound wasn’t drastic enough?” I say.

  “Just shut your mouth and keep your eyes open, Zero.”

  While we wait, there’s a buzzing overhead. A black orb comes into view, floating overhead, like a bird without wings.

  “Cam!” Dex shouts.

  We all dive for cover, bury ourselves in the trash, cover ourselves with whatever we can find. I play dead, a body lying facedown, my hand over my Ward Mark on my neck, a bold, black X.

  I can hear the whirr of the Cam as it spins in place, recording. The Leeches started sending them out only hours after we attacked their Headquarters.

  They’re looking for Lark. For the Resistance. For me.

  They won’t find any of us.

  Finally, the Cam disappears, soars away into the outer parts of the Graveyard. We come out of hiding, regroup together in a cluster. I rub dirt from my eyes, and when I turn to look at Dex and Rhone, something catches my attention.

  It’s a man only a few feet away.

  He wasn’t there before.

  His body is covered in the armor of the Gravers. Pieces of trash, woven together to make a breastplate. His long dark hair is laced through with coins and beads, like tokens.

  “You called,” the Graver says.

  Behind him, two other Gravers emerge from the trash, holding spears made of old metal pipes. They could have been there all along, perfectly disguised, and we never would have noticed them. The Gravers have become one with the trash, wasted parts of the world that they’ve found use for all over again.

  “We want to make a trade,” Rhone says. He motions for Dex to hold up the blade. She lifts it high. The sunlight glints off of it, gleams like fire. It’s a good blade. Surely the Gravers will want it. “The blade for information. We’re searching for someone.”

  The Graver man laughs, but it comes out more like a wheeze. He is probably in his fifties, but his arms are strong. I bet he could put up a solid fight. “We know who you seek,” he says. “The songbird woman. Lark.”

  “You know?” I ask.

  Dex giggles. “The Gravers hear everything and watch everything. Sometimes, they talk to me at night.”

  Rhone puts a protective hand on her shoulder, then addresses the Graver leader. “Do you know where Lark Woodson is hiding?”

  “We can offer more than just a blade,” I say. “We can offer food. Stolen Leech items, when we come across them.”

  The Graver points to my good ear, where the Leech earpiece sits. He points to Rhone, too, who has the other part of the pair. “The machines,” he says. “We want them.”

  I look at Rhone, raise an eyebrow. He nods. We remove our earpieces and throw them across the gap. They roll to a stop in front of the Graver leader’s feet. His two companions rush forward, scoop them up.

  “The blade, too,” the Graver says.

  Rhone tosses it.

  We wait.

  A cloud covers the sun for a second, and in the shadows, the Gravers look even more haunting. I clench my fists, hope for answers.

  “We don’t know where Lark hides,” the Graver says.

  “What the hell? Then give us our stuff!” Dex takes a step forward, but Rhone pulls her back.

  The Graver laughs again, that same horrible wheeze. “You should join us, little one. You would do well to learn patience from the Gravers.” He stares at Dex for too long, before looking back at Rhone and me. “We don’t know where Lark Woodson is. But we have something else, someone else, that might be of interest to you.”

  He clicks his teeth, lifts a hand.

  The Gravers behind him disappear into the tunnel between two trash mountains. Minutes pass. Finally, they reappear, but this time they aren’t alone. They’re dragging a body between them, one that fights weakly to get away.

  “You will find good use for this one,” the Graver leader says. “She thinks she can steal from the Gravers. She is wrong.”

  The Gravers hauling the body come closer, until I can see it’s a woman, bound in chains.

  Her hair is dark, matted to her head, and when they throw her to the ground, she lets out a horrible whimper that sounds like an animal on the verge of death. The woman’s limbs are too thin, way too weak for fighting. What use could someone like her be to us?

  “Who is she?” Rhone asks. “Why would we want her?”

  The Gravers laugh, all of them together, and it sounds like the hissing of the cockroaches that scurry among the trash.

  “Her face,” the leader says. “Look at her face, and you’ll know.” He clicks his teeth again, and one of his men stoops to one knee. Grabs the prisoner by the chin and forces her to look up.

  At first, all I see is the scar. It takes up half of her entire face, the skin to the left of her nose puckering so bad that it makes her look like she came right out of a nightmare. Her left eyes is missing, and part of her hair, closer to that side, has burned away, leaving wrinkled, reddened skin in its place.

  “What’s your name?” Rhone asks.

  The woman opens her mouth, and when she speaks, her voice is so familiar that it shocks me down to my core.

  “Sparrow,” she says. Her one eye meets mine, and I gasp.

  It’s gray.

  Gray like a storm cloud, gray like an angry sea.

  Gray like Meadow’s, and Lark’s, and everyone else in their family. An unmistakable color.

  “My name is Sparrow,” the woman says again. She grimaces when she speaks the next words, spits them out like they’re full of poison. “Lark Woodson is my sister.”

  CHAPTER 10

  MEADOW

  We have not eaten in two days.

  At first, Sketch and I made a game out of our growling stomachs, laughing every time it happened, seeing whose would growl louder and longer.

  But now the laughter has faded.

  And a desperate hunger has taken its place. It reminds me of when I found my mother, how she was skin and bones, sunken eyes and cheeks.

  If I were to look at my reflection, is that what I would see? A younger version of my mother, staring back? Sometimes, I feel a darkness lurking beneath the surface of my soul. Sometimes, I imagine I hear voices, whispering in my ears. They tell me that I am weakening. They tell me that soon, I will lose this fight.

  Sometimes, I almost talk back.

  It is my mother’s insanity, the same force that once took ahold on her. And now it is after me.

  I am carving another line into my calf when the Interrogator comes. He brings a whip with prongs on the ends, and lashes Sketch’s back until she bleeds into unconsciousness.
The next day, with another line carved, he turns on me.

  Sketch and I wake, hours later, healed from the nanites, but broken down a little bit more.

  Now, we sit in darkness.

  “It’s so damn cold,” Sketch groans.

  “Ignore it,” I say, even though everything has become numb. My lips, my toes, my ears, and I long for the warm sand, the sun on my skin, the ocean water in the afternoon heat. “Just pretend we aren’t here.”

  But she is right.

  The chill of the air has begun to seep its way into my bones. I am afraid that if I move, I will shatter like glass.

  Sometimes, Sketch falls asleep. I keep her awake by mumbling her name or singing songs that my mother used to sing when I was only a child. Back when we were on the houseboat, safe and sound.

  Now, that safety has burned to ashes, buried beneath the sea.

  “I’m gonna die in here,” Sketch says. “They’ll keep you alive because they have to. But me? I ain’t worth nothing. They’ll kill me soon.”

  “Don’t say that,” I whisper. “That’s what they want you to believe. You have to be strong.”

  “Strength is just an illusion, Protector.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I shake my head. I want to tell her what my father would tell me: that strength, in the face of fear, is the only thing that will keep us alive. But the Initiative is always listening, watching.

  I will not give them my father’s words.

  “Can you keep a secret?” Sketch asks.

  “Yes. You should know that by now. I think both of us are pretty good at keeping secrets, Sketch.”

  “Prisoner humor,” she says. “Nice.” She swallows, and I can hear it, like rocks grating against each other. The heretics fork is still stuck to her throat. Dried blood has crusted on her skin. When she starts to drop her head, I remind her to stop, remind her that she’s strong enough to keep her head held high, because I know the pain that will come if she lowers it is my fault.

  Sketch is only here because of me.

  “I want to die,” Sketch says. She doesn’t sound sad or upset. It is an honest admission, a brave thing to tell. “I wish I were dead.”

  “Then you’re lucky. Because I have a theory that we’re already in hell.”