She gathers whatever energy she has left and focuses it all on her final destination. Knowing this is the last time she will ever see him.
The front door of the house bursts open just as the feel of his touch dissolves against her skin and the first tear treks down her face.
She lands huddled on the floor of the submarine’s command center, trembling. She drifts in and out of consciousness as Trestin covers her with a blanket, tugs on her pants to remove the vial from her pocket. He works quickly, inserting the needle and drawing out the fluid.
She feels the prick in her arm as he locates the vein.
The heavy, clear, cleansing liquid chugs through her bloodstream. Reversing the past. Healing the pain.
Trapping her in time forever.
59
BATTLE
Maxxer’s memory fades to an end and I open my eyes and take in the mess that we’ve created.
Furniture has been overturned. Framed artwork has fallen from the walls and shattered. Breakfast food and broken dishes are scattered across the white rug. Maxxer’s two guards lie in a heap at the base of the stairs, looking like a lumpy pile of snow in their crisp white uniforms. One’s nose bleeds from where it came into contact with the heel of my hand. The other sports a swollen lip from Kaelen’s elbow.
And Maxxer. She is unconscious on the couch. Sitting upright with her head slumped forward. Kaelen’s fingertips are still resting against her forehead. Sending her memories directly to the receptors he removed from his own head and placed on mine.
I blink and study my surroundings. Recognizing the room from the memory. I eye the section of carpet at the base of the dining table where Trestin injected Maxxer with the clear liquid from the vial.
The repressor.
The cure.
Disabling her gene permanently. Reversing the effects of the illness. Keeping her here forever. She will never transesse again.
“What did you see?” Kaelen asks, interrupting my thoughts.
I blink up at him. “There were three doses,” I explain.
Kaelen nods, as though he already knew this. “When it was believed that Dr. Maxxer returned to the compound, Dr. Alixter confirmed that the molecule accelerator in Maxxer’s lab had been used to manufacture three doses of a serum. But they could never be found. He assumed she came back to produce an antidote to reverse the effects of the gene. But when he attempted to re-create it, he was unsuccessful. Dr. Maxxer made sure no one could replicate her process.”
I nod. “I didn’t see how the antidote was manufactured. The memory started after the vials were already created.”
“She most likely erased it.”
I gaze at Maxxer’s sleeping face. She’s been so careful to guard so many secrets. And yet I feel like there are still some that have yet to be uncovered.
What did she mean when she said, “You have to find him.”
“Did you see what happened to the three doses?” Kaelen asks.
I bite my lip. “Maxxer used one of them on herself.”
“What about the other two?”
Maxxer’s memories may have been fuzzier and harder to decipher than my own, but I recognized the man she gave them to. I know exactly who it is.
And this is where the road seems to come to a dead end. Yet again. Just further evidence proving that the forces of the universe have banded together to fight against me. To keep me from Zen.
“She gave them to Rio,” I tell Kaelen with a crestfallen sigh, feeling the stab of another hope disintegrating into nothing. “And he’s dead.”
Kaelen falls eerily quiet and I glance over to see his bottom lip is twitching. As though his body is having an epic battle with his brain. The outcome of which will determine whether or not his mouth moves and words emerge.
It’s the old Kaelen—the brainwashed, programmed, order-abiding version of himself—declaring war against this new, unfamiliar rebellious one. Attempting to regain control.
I stare in stunned silence as the internal battle wages on. As his eyes squeeze tightly shut. As his face contorts into what I can only describe as torment.
“Kaelen,” I finally say, gently placing my hand on his. He jumps at the contact and his eyes flicker open. “Are you all right?”
With visible effort, his mouth moves. His fingers curl into a tight ball underneath my hand. And for a minute I think he’s going to let out a scream.
“It’s okay,” I assure him, rubbing his tense, white knuckles. “You’re safe. You’re with me.”
For some reason, my comforting seems to work. After minutes of brutal combat, a victor emerges. The old Kaelen is shoved back down into the dark corners of his mind. And the new Kaelen speaks. His voice breathless and weary. His words choppy and clipped.
“Dr.… Rio…”
“What about him?” I ask, my eyebrows pinched together.
“He’s … not … dead.”
60
INCISED
I saw him.
I saw him fall. I saw him shake and shake and shake until he was deathly still. I saw the life fade from his eyes. Right in front of me. In that cave.
I saw him die.
The memory has haunted me since that day.
“But the Modifier.” I stumble through the words. “Alixter turned it all the way up.”
“It’s a destructive setting, yes,” Kaelen admits. “But it’s not fatal on its own.”
“What does it do, then?” I ask, my voice trembling as I remember Alixter describing the setting as something he called scramble.
“His brain has been severely damaged,” Kaelen explains. “Dr. Alixter brought him back to the compound after your escape. The lack of brain activity will eventually cause his body to shut down permanently. But Dr. Alixter has been keeping him alive. Artificially. He’s in a guarded room at the compound’s medical facility.”
Bombs are exploding in my head. Tiny detonations of joy. Of relief. Of hope.
“How do you know this?” I ask, a small shadow of my former distrust resurfacing.
“It was part of my intelligence briefing before I was sent on this mission. And”—Kaelen hesitates, his eyes shifting—“I’ve seen him.”
“We have to go there,” I say immediately, surprising myself with my own eagerness.
This is Diotech I’m referring to.
The place where I was made. Where I was imprisoned. The place Zen fought so hard to help me escape from.
But if that’s where Rio is, if that’s the only clue to finding Zen’s cure, then there is no hesitation.
“You have to take me there,” I tell Kaelen. “Rio knows where the other two doses of the repressor are.”
Kaelen’s head is already swinging back and forth before I’ve even finished speaking. “His brain is in an indecipherable state. He’s not even conscious. He’ll never be able to tell you where it is. He won’t even know you’re there.”
But I’m not deterred. Not when this is my last chance. “We have to try,” I vow. “I have to try. For him.”
Kaelen looks away, refusing to meet my eye. “Are you sure you want to go back there? If you’re caught—”
“I know the risks,” I say quickly, before he can finish the thought. I fear that if I hear the consequences aloud, I’ll lose my nerve.
I don’t have to guess what Alixter will do if he finds me there. If I’m apprehended. He’s already made his intentions for me perfectly clear.
I won’t lie. The thought of returning to the Diotech compound nearly paralyzes me. But there’s only one thing I’m sure of. And that is my desire to save Zen. Even if someone told me I had to go to the moon to do it, I would say yes.
Always yes.
“You said Rio’s room was guarded,” I say.
“From the outside,” Kaelen clarifies.
“Can you get us directly inside then?”
He nods. “Yes.”
Then there’s nothing else to debate. The decision is made.
I reach for the locket that’s still d
angling from my wrist and ease open its door. Then I slide my hand into Kaelen’s and he closes his eyes, focusing.
I wait, staring down at our intertwined fingers. And that’s when I see it.
Peeking out from underneath the sleeve of his shirt.
His tattoo. His black scar. His tracking device.
I quickly fling his hand away. “Wait!”
Kaelen’s eyes snap open. “What?”
I flip over my own wrist and show him my matching mark. I can see the comprehension flashing over his face.
“They’ll know the moment we arrive,” I tell him.
He nods. “What do we do?”
I think about that morning on the Pattinsons’ farm. When I slashed it out with a knife in a fit of rage. How fast it grew back.
“We can cut them out,” I say, my voice stern and decisive.
“They will grow back,” he replies immediately.
“Not right away. We’ll have less than an hour to figure out where the two doses are and get out before they’re scannable again.”
I’m already glancing around the disheveled room for a tool. Anything with a sharp edge. My eye falls on a broken shard of glass from one of the fallen pieces of artwork. I dart over to retrieve it. Kaelen scurries behind me.
Feeling my heart race and my throat go dry, I look up at him, our gazes colliding. Sparks flying. “I’ll remove yours if you’ll remove mine.”
He holds his arm out, wrist up. “Go deep,” he whispers. “It’ll give us more time.”
I nod, wincing, and take a shuddering breath before pressing the sharp edge of the glass to his flawless skin.
61
RETURN
I bite my lip and wince against the pain as Kaelen makes the last cut along my wrist, completing the rectangular gash where my tattoo once was. The blood is dripping down the side of my arm, staining the pristine white carpet beneath me, next to the small crimson splotch that Kaelen’s wound already created.
I press the palm of my hand against the cut, trying to stanch the blood.
“Don’t,” Kaelen says, pulling my hand away.
“It’s bleeding everywhere.”
“You’ll heal faster if the blood clots.”
Warily, I remove my hand and cringe at the feeling of the warm, sticky liquid oozing into my palm.
“Just keep it elevated,” Kaelen tells me, raising his own hand above his head. I do the same.
“Remember,” I tell him, “since we don’t know exactly when Alixter created you, we have to transesse to a time after you left.”
“I know.”
“Do you know when you were sent to 1609 to apprehend me?”
Kaelen nods.
“So a week later, to be safe?”
He agrees and grips my raised hand with his. I immediately feel our exposed blood blending. Our scientifically perfected life forces combining.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
I take a deep breath, glancing around the room. My gaze lands on Maxxer, still lying unconscious on the couch. She told me I could decide. I could join her alliance, or say no.
I guess this is me … saying no.
But I never thought this would be the alternate option.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been running from Diotech and all the things they represent. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been doing whatever I could to evade them. Deceive them. Stay as far away from them as I can. And now I’m about to go back there. With one of them.
But Kaelen is different, isn’t he? He’s changed. He’s proved that he’s changed. He’s proved that he no longer holds allegiance to Alixter. That he’s no longer being controlled by his programming. He’s broken free. And made his own choice.
Just as I have.
But a nagging thought creeps its way into the front of my mind.
What if it’s been an act?
The cure. The kiss. Kaelen’s seeming change of heart.
What if this whole thing has been one giant trap designed to take me back there? To get me to come willingly?
No, I tell myself.
I refuse to believe that. I know Kaelen. We are one and the same. I can read him almost as well as I can read myself. We are linked somehow. We’ve both proved that already.
He wouldn’t deceive me. Not after everything that’s happened. Not after everything we’ve been through.
And even if it is a trap, even if he has been conning me this whole time, what other solution do I have? Rio knows where the last two doses of the repressor are. And that makes him the only option.
I look up, meeting his intense gaze, and whisper, “Yes,” with what little conviction I have left. “I’m ready.”
I close my eyes. Even though I’m not the one directing this transession. Even though my concentration is not needed. I can’t watch. I can’t look.
After everything Zen did to break me out, I’m about to step right back into the middle of my prison.
I’m about to willingly return to the one place I vowed I would never return to. Where I was created. Where I was manufactured. Where my life began.
I’m finally going home.
62
MESSY
The hospital room is white and sterile and filled with sleek, sophisticated machines unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. There are no wires anywhere. Every piece of equipment seems to be powered by an invisible source. The screens of the various computers and monitors are paper-thin, making me think they could be snapped in half with the slightest pressure.
When my vision focuses, I see the bed on the other side of the room. There are no legs or other support mechanisms holding it up. It simply hovers above the ground.
It isn’t until I see Rio’s face resting on the crisp white pillowcase that I know we’ve made it.
His rough red beard is fuller, scragglier. His hair is longer, falling into his eyes. And his skin is worn and tattered. Like it’s been left out in the rain one too many times.
But other than that, he looks the same.
Seeing him in this comatose state, his eyes open and unnervingly staring into space, I realize how robbed I feel. He was the closest thing I’ll ever have to a family and he’s gone. Our time together was too short. As soon as I realized how important he was, what he meant to me, it was over. Alixter turned him into this.
I will never have another conversation with him.
I will never be able to ask him questions about my past. Or his relationship with Maxxer.
I will never be able to see the gentleness—the life—in his soft green-gray eyes.
I have this irresistible urge to run to him, to place my palm against his cheek, to rest my head on his chest. But something stops me.
A noise.
A kind of grinding sound. And that’s when I see the woman. At least, from the waist up, she looks like a woman. But instead of legs, she has wheels attached to the bottom of her torso.
The sight of her makes me shriek. But Kaelen is one step ahead of me. His hand covers my mouth, muffling the sound, and he yanks me back. We scuttle under a table, scooting as far away as we can until we hit a wall.
“What is it?” I ask in that inaudible voice I know only he can hear.
“A med bot.”
“A what?”
But apparently I was a bit too loud because he presses his finger to his lips. “Robotic intelligence. They’re assigned to do various tasks around the compound.”
I watch the strange lifelike creature in wonderment as she wheels around the room, going about her duties, checking the machines and computers monitoring Rio.
“Does she know we’re here?” I ask in my hoarse whisper.
“If she did, we would know.”
She rolls over to the table that we’re hiding beneath and Kaelen and I both suck in a simultaneous breath, pushing ourselves as far back against the wall as we can. I watch her bottom half glide efficiently across the length of the table. The spherical wheels turning effortlessly front
to back, side to side, even diagonally.
My heart is pounding so loud right now, I’m convinced that it will only be a matter of time before she hears it and sounds the alarm.
After what feels like hours, I watch her wheel up to the wall opposite us and swipe her eerily humanlike hand across a clear panel. A door appears where there once was just a seamless white wall, and it slides open. She exits and the door closes behind her, blending back into the façade as though it never existed in the first place.
Kaelen moves fast. Crawling out from under the table and then reaching down to help me. “We have to be quick. She’s probably on a rotation.”
“How long?” I ask.
“Twenty minutes,” he guesses. “Maybe less.”
I check that the receptors are still securely attached to my head and hurry toward Rio’s bedside. On a nearby table is a thin plastic screen. Information is flying across it at dizzying speed. Lines and lines of what appears to be code.
“What is that?” I ask.
“Looks like a search,” Kaelen responds, picking up the screen and studying the data. “It’s probably connected to his brain. Alixter is looking for something.”
“What?” I ask, feeling nauseated.
He squints, absorbing the numbers as they soar past. “I can’t tell,” he says. “The search is encoded.”
“Can you link me to his brain?”
Kaelen nods, tapping the piece of plastic. “Initiating link,” he reports back. “You’ll be connected in five, four, three, two…”
SCREECH!
I’m suddenly bombarded by a swirling, dizzying array of images and rapidly moving scenes. None of them are complete or clear. They’re all choppy and faded, some even distorted, like they’ve been wrung out by extremely strong hands, causing the picture to look twisted and alien and terrifying.
They spin frantically. But there’s no order to any of them. I’m getting woozy from the influx of data.
And the noise. It’s the loudest, most distressing sound I’ve ever heard. Like a million people screaming into my ear at the same time. Demanding to be heard.
I press my hand to my head, trying to steady myself. Trying to block out the sound and concentrate on just one picture. One face. One voice. But it’s impossible. There is no logic. No sense. No way to sort through anything.