I turn to face him. But before I can move, he holds up his other hand. A strip of black cloth hangs from his fingers. “Nothing will be given to you. You will take it.”
I sit quietly as he ties the cloth over my eyes.
“Listen to the sounds around you.” His voice comes at me from the right. I turn and lunge, but I can feel the whip of wind as he dodges my hit. He takes my legs out from under me, and I crash to the ground. I get a mouth full of dirt and grime.
“Not good enough, Meadow. Focus.”
I grit my teeth and stand, listening for my father’s voice, for his breath. To the left. I kick out and this time I connect, but he moves quickly. I whirl around and his fingers close over my throat.
“You’re dead,” he says, releasing me. “Again.”
I fail twice. Three times. Blood drips from my forehead, soaking the blindfold.
“Make it mean something. You have to want it.”
And I do. I think of Peri and Koi. I think of my mother and how she hid who she really was from us. Darkness is all I have ever felt inside. This should be no different.
“Don’t look them in the eyes. Listen to their breathing instead, and follow their movements.” My father’s voice is to the right of me now. He’s talking about people like Zephyr. But are they enemies, if what they are doing is beyond their control?
I listen, but he is silent as a predator.
There’s a breeze. Metal clinks, paper rustles, cockroaches hiss. Steam falls across my shoulders, making the heat unbearable. I release my senses to my surroundings, and imagine him circling me, waiting for me to fail. I will not fail.
There is a slight change in the tone of the world when something blocks me from the wind. It is the absence of sound, as if my father absorbs the noise. I visualize sound waves rippling around him and take the chance. I dive for him, fueled by my anger, my pain, my fear. We slam into the ground and I shove the tip of my dagger up against his throat. For a moment, I want to cut him. I want to put scars on his body and make him hurt the way he has hurt me. But it would only make him prouder, so I slip my dagger back into its sheath. “Give me the damn answers.”
I roll away and lay back on the dirt. I tear off the blindfold.
“She was godlike, your mother. Changing the laws of the universe. Her parents worked their entire lives in science. When they died because of the Plague, your mother dedicated herself to avenging them. She found a cure.”
“The Pins and the Pulse,” I say, and he nods.
“They set up stations all over the country. Soon, everyone was healed.”
I close my eyes and will myself to listen and not judge.
“But death has its place in the world,” my father continues. “You cannot eradicate it without consequences.”
My father rolls over onto his side and looks at me.
“Do you remember when you used to collect seashells?”
I nod. My mother would take me to the beach every day when I was a child. We’d scour the sand and find treasures. She would tell me stories about where each one came from. A mermaid. Two friends standing on separate shores, sending tokens of their love out across the sea. But soon I had so many. There was not enough room in my jar to keep them all. And suddenly I understand what my father means.
Without death, there is only life. I remember how my mother and I had leaned over the side of the boat and watched as my precious treasures drifted away into the sea.
“We’ll start over, Meadow,” she told me.
Is that what she decided to do with us?
“There was no way to take back what she had done. You give the world a miracle”—he says it like it is quite the opposite— Well, there’s no taking it back. So the Shallows came to be, and the walls went up to hold us all in. And the Murder Complex was born.”
Nausea churns in my stomach, threatening to rise up my throat. I don’t want to hear what he is going to say next. I don’t want to know that everything I have learned is true.
“Originally it was just a testing site. She played god. She took back from the people what she had given, and then some. She used the Murder Complex to decide who would die, and when.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why not just reverse the Cure? Couldn’t we just take out the Pins?”
My father laughs. “The Pins are just a cover-up, Meadow. There are no nanites in our Pins. They were released into our blood streams, through the water, a long time ago. They’re still in us, Meadow, but we all have a Pin so that we can be tracked. The Shallows is a testing center. We are all a part of an experiment. Or at least it started that way. It was only supposed to last a few years. Now they keep us here. We are trapped and the world out there is much worse. The Pulse, believe it or not, keeps people out. Well, assuming there is anyone left out there.”
“And the Murder Complex?” I ask. “Why keep it going?”
My father sighs. “The Cure is in everyone’s blood, and once it’s in, it stays, and it gets passed on. No one dies, Meadow.”
“And the people like Zephyr? What about them?”
He turns away and stares back up at the stars. “They are created, Meadow. The Patients. Not by birth, but in the lab. Their bodies grow at a rapid rate, and once they are mature enough, the surgery is simple. There is an implant that is activated when the lottery chooses them for a mission. They are given happy memories. Sad memories. Whatever will make them believe they were born and raised in the world, with everyone else.
“They are made Wards. At night, they are watched inside their Reserve. It was your mother’s idea. What citizen would suspect the orphaned Wards? In reality, they are far from worthless. It’s all a cover-up. They’re like machines.”
Zephyr. Poor Zephyr.
“Things changed when the lottery chose you, Meadow.”
“What?”
“The Murder Complex chose you. To die. You weren’t supposed to be in the system. But there you were, like someone had programmed you into it. Maybe as revenge.”
“Did she stop it? I mean . . . she took me out of the system, right?”
The wind blows my hair back from my eyes, and I can see my father is watching me. “She loved you, Meadow.”
“I asked you if she took me out.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “She believed that the lottery was law. There is no changing it. No altering it.”
“So she sacrificed me?”
“No. She took you out before anyone could murder you.” He sighs, placing his hand on my shoulder. “We never did figure out who put you in. They could still be out there. And someday, Meadow, your time might come. Your mother is gone. She cannot protect you anymore. You will have to do whatever you need to do to survive. It is what you have trained your entire life for.”
If what he says is true, then whoever it was has struck again. Zephyr wasn’t supposed to go after me. But he did. He tried to murder me. I have been programmed into his brain. Maybe for years. “Why me?” I ask. “Why not Koi or Peri? Or you? And mom is dead. There’s no point in getting back at her now. Why can’t they just let us be?”
My father closes his eyes. He sighs. “Because you were always special to your mother,” he says. “And murdering an entire generation is not something that most people can let go, Meadow.”
“And mom?” I say as I take this all in. My voice is strangely calm. “What really happened to her?”
“They didn’t need her anymore. She wanted to quit, and take us all out of the Shallows, back into the real world, to take our chances. So they killed her before she could. I saw her, Meadow. She was . . . completely destroyed.” He stands to leave me, but turns and stops.
“There is a Resistance. If anything happens to me, I want you to find them and join them. I want you to fight against what your mother started.”
Then he is gone.
I will do whatever I can to stop what my mother started. That I know.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
H
arperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER 62
ZEPHYR
Meadow comes back when the Night Siren starts to wail.
“Hey,” she says. “Let’s go talk. Away from . . . ” She nods her head toward her brother.
“Fine with me,” I say. “I don’t like being alone.”
We crawl down the dark tunnel. I stay totally silent until she asks, “What are you afraid of?”
“Honestly? I’m afraid of myself,” I admit. Because it’s true. I don’t want to see the faces and the numbers tonight. I don’t want to see the people I’ve killed because of her mother’s psycho experiment.
Meadow takes my hand.
No one ever touches me.
“I’m glad we didn’t kill each other,” she says. Maybe I should laugh. She almost does.
“What’s your story, Zephyr?”
“You already know my story. You know exactly what I am,” I say.
“You’re not a what, Zephyr. You’re a who . . . ” Her voice is careful, like she’s searching for something that she’s afraid she’ll actually find. “Can you feel it? The Murder Complex?”
“It’s hard to explain,” I say. “It’s like there’s another person inside of me. This crazy person who just wants to hurt people. The other day, when I came to find you on your boat . . . I killed three Pirates. And it felt good.”
“But you were triggered on them, right?” she asks. “And it only happens during the Dark Time?”
“No. I wasn’t triggered. It’s like it’s changing me. Someday I might be as bad as the Leeches.”
She frowns. “Do you have memories?” she asks. “From before all this?”
“Some,” I say. And it’s true. I have memories. I feed off of them to keep myself going.
“Tell me one,” she says. There’s something weird in her eyes I can’t figure out. She leans forward like she needs to hear my stories.
No one’s ever needed to hear anything I have to say. Not even Talan. “We used to sit on the boardwalk. Watch the sunset, me and my parents.”
“Mmm . . . ” she says, and when I look over her eyes are closed and she’s leaning up against the wall of the tunnel, a smile on her lips, like she’s feeding off of my memories. I wonder what’s wrong with her own.
I keep talking, because I want her to keep smiling. “I had a big brother, too. He had a baby girl and every time I held her she’d giggle and squirm in my arms. It was the happiest sound I’d ever heard. She didn’t know what the world was like yet.”
My mouth keeps spilling the words and I don’t try to stop. For the first time, someone wants to listen. “I have lots of memories. Happy ones. But a lot of them are fuzzy...when I . . . when my parents died, they said they couldn’t find my brother . . . it’s like he wasn’t even real. . . . ”
“I don’t want to hear about that. Tell me more about you when you were little.”
“We used to go to the park . . . the one that overlooks the ocean,” I say. I want to wrap my arm around her shoulders. But the second I start to, she stiffens. I hold her hand instead. We climb out of the tunnel, into the entrance of the shack.
“My father would push me on the swings and it felt like I was flying . . . I have a favorite memory, though,” I say. “It was the morning I woke up and found you standing in the Rations Hall.” I reach toward her and pull her chin up. “Look at me,” I say, but she shakes her head. “Hey. I won’t hurt you, Meadow. I owe you my life, remember?”
She looks up slowly. “My father said that if you’re triggered, you’ll try to attack me when our eyes meet,” she says.
“Then I’ll keep them closed,” I tell her.
I close my eyes and I feel her breath on my cheek.
“I want to believe you,” she whispers. “It’s like I’ve known you all my life.”
I reach out and touch her cheek. Her skin is so soft. “I wish I could find the words to tell you how beautiful you are,” I whisper.
“Your eyes are closed.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “How can you say that if you aren’t even looking at me?”
“You’re ruining the moment.”
“You’re wrong,” she says, breathing in. She starts leaning toward me, and I start leaning toward her.
I’m about to kiss her when a voice calls out from the darkness of the tunnel. “That’s close enough, Zephyr.”
I turn and see a figure coming toward us. “Ah, skitz,” I whisper. “Really?”
It’s her brother.
“Koi,” Meadow squeaks, backing away from me. She studies her fingernails like they’re the most interesting thing in the world.
Is she embarrassed?
“Get away from my sister,” Koi says. He reaches for her, then takes a half-step in front of her like she needs protecting.
“Koi, it’s fine,” Meadow says. “Nothing happened!”
“I’ve been waiting a long time to do this to one of them.” Koi’s voice is hard. He keeps his arm in front of Meadow, holding her back from me. And then, before I realize what he’s up to, he punches me, square in the face.
“Koi!” Meadow screams, and tries to pull him away, but he pushes her off and lunges at me, pinning me down with his body.
The punches come fast and hard.
One to the cheek. One to my brow. One that almost hits me in the temple, but I flinch and dodge the blow.
By the time Meadow manages to pull him off, my face is dripping blood, and the world’s spinning in and out of focus.
“What the hell are you doing?” Meadow screams. Her voice is furious, hard like sharpened steel. “Zephyr! Get out of here.”
“No! He stays,” Koi says. “So I can kill him.”
“Like hell you will,” Meadow yells, and she steps in front of me. “We need him.”
“For what?” Koi groans. “He killed her, Meadow. He killed mom.”
She stumbles backward. “What are you talking about, Koi?”
“The Patients! She created them, and it made her crazy! They killed her!”
“You knew?” Meadow gasps. “All this time you knew, and you never told me? How could you do this to me?”
She pulls him away, and the two of them speak in hushed voices. I catch bits and pieces of what they’re saying about me. About the others like me.
I don’t want to hear.
I stumble away from them, out into the Graveyard. There are tears in my eyes, blood in my mouth, questions in my mind. None of this makes any sense.
Somehow I make it to the steam tower. I stand there under it and let the heat and darkness drown out my thoughts. For a second, I consider finding something sharp. Ending my life for good this time, when Meadow can’t stop me.
But then I remember my promise to Talan. And stars, now there’s Meadow. I don’t want to leave Meadow.
I hear footsteps. I hear her calling my name, but I don’t respond.
I don’t feel like being found.
But she finds me anyway, and her ChumHead of a brother’s with her.
“What am I?” I ask, looking at him.
“You’re a machine,” he says. “Your brain is programmed. It makes you kill. When the Initiative wants you to murder, all they do is press play.”
“We have to stop them.” Meadow’s eyes are on mine. Her body is wet with sweat, and her hair sticks to her skin. She turns to her brother, then back to me. “We have to stop the Initiative. We have to stop what our mother started.”
“I want in,” I say, because I’ll do anything for this girl. I’ll even follow her down to hell if I have to. And knowing her, that’s probably where we’re about to go. “Is there a way to reverse it? A way to . . . take it out of my brain?”
Koi stares at me. I half expect him to lunge at me. But then he looks at Meadow. She’s watching me.
“You care about him?” he asks her.
“Yes.”
It’s the best word I’ve ev
er heard.
“I wish you didn’t,” Koi says. His breathing slows. His shoulders droop, and his eyes go all soft, like their little sister’s. He shakes his head and turns to me. “I don’t know much about the Murder Complex. But if you want answers, you won’t find them here.”
“The Initiative,” Meadow says. A piece of paper gets picked up by the wind and dances past her feet. “They’re going to bring Zephyr in. Shut him down.”
Koi nods. “You could turn yourself in.” He shrugs. “I would be fine with it.”
“Stop it,” Meadow hisses.
I look down at my hands. They don’t feel like my own.
“If I turn myself in . . . will they stop chasing you and your family?”
“You are not doing that, Zephyr. They’ll kill you.” Meadow crosses her arms over her chest. “We’ll find another way to get answers. There must be someone who can help us . . . someone who knows more about this . . . ”
“There is someone,” says Koi. “But all I have is a name.”
Meadow stares hard into his eyes. “Well? Who is it?”
“A woman,” he says. “She worked with our mother. I don’t even know if she’s still alive, Meadow. It was years ago.”
“Who is it, Koi?”
A scream comes from the darkness. A girl runs in our direction, pushing past us, tears running down her face.
“What’s wrong?” I yell.
“Gravers!” she gasps, then stumbles away. “The Gravers are here!”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER 63
MEADOW
They come like locusts.
Slowly, in packs of two or three, then all of them at once.
Where they hide in the day, no one knows. The Graveyard is a maze. There are plenty of places to slip away. At night, they swarm the pathways. They take everything from everyone, and leave broken people in their wake.
A Graver woman comes for me, wearing armor made of trash. Old flattened soda cans cover her chest. Forks and spoons are twined together, shielding her arms. She has black paint smudged all over her face, and when she approaches me, I am so horrified that I nearly back away.