I writhe in agony while emotions run their course through me. First there’s pain. Then the loss of my mom and dad, the emptiness that came after I realized what I did.
Next, I feel like I’m floating in the stars, happier than I’ve ever been.
“When did he last activate?” I hear Lark’s voice.
“About a week ago,” Meadow says.
“It’s an aftershock,” she says. There isn’t even a drip of sympathy in her voice. “They rebooted him.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He was flawed, now he’s not. They’ve healed him.”
“He’s not healed! Look at him!”
“They’ve been torturing me, trying to get me to reboot the system. Yesterday, I caved. Gave them all the codes, all the control.”
“You did what?”
I hear a whimper. “I’m so sorry. My god, darling, I’ve made a mess of things.” A deep breath. A trembling whisper. “Meadow . . . when Patient Zero was just a boy, something in him was so strong, so good, to his very core, that he was able to fight the Murder Complex. That was his flaw. I guess they’ve figured it out. We’re all good until we’re not strong enough to be anymore. He’s healed. He’s going to change now. Kill him while you still have the chance.”
I’m crying. I can’t stop. All I feel is sorrow, for every death I’ve ever experienced, every life I’ve stolen. Meadow screams something, but I can’t hear the words.
I look at her. She turns to me, everything in slow motion. I see her wave of hair. Her eyelashes. Her gray eyes when she looks right at me.
“Welcome back to the Murder Complex, Patient Zero. Initiate Termin— . . . ”
Meadow.
Love.
“Kill.
Destroy.
No escaping.
No turning back.
This is your duty.
Purge the Earth.
This is the Murder Complex.”
Meadow.
Love.
I grit my teeth. I open my eyes and stare right at her.
“NO!”
Then the world goes black, and I’m finally in peace.
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CHAPTER 89
MEADOW
The smile never leaves his face.
When he wakes a moment later, I pull him to me and crush my lips against his.
“Meadow.” He is weak as he pulls away. Breathless. “I fought it. I fought it.”
“I know,” I say. “I told you you were strong.”
“Fascinating,” my mother says. “Fascinating, just as he always has been.”
Zephyr pulls himself upright, wincing. “Lark. She’s the voice. The voice I hear in my mind.”
I look away from him, to where my mother stands over two dead guards. Where did they come from? Their throats are slit. She stares down at them as if they are made of diamonds. She points the gun at one of them. He is already dead, but I hear the squelching sound as the bullet penetrates his flesh. She smiles. “Let’s move.”
The halls are strangely empty. No guards come rushing for us, no alarms sound. There is a chill that snakes its way up and down my spine. This feels wrong, like the way the ocean is always calm just before a massive storm hits.
“We have a job to do before we get my family,” I say, pointing down the hall. There’s only one way to go.
“Your family?” My mother raises an eyebrow at me, a look she used to give me when she was about to scold me.
“Yes. My family would never abandon me,” I say. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t take you there, Meadow. I know what you plan to do.”
“You have to take us,” Zephyr says, gritting his teeth. “Or we’ll kill you.”
“My daughter is strong, Patient Zero. But she is not strong enough to kill her own mother.”
“I wasn’t talking about Meadow,” Zephyr says. He takes the gun from my waistband and points it at her face.
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess,” my mother says, nodding her head. “I trained you well. This way.” She turns on her heel and marches down the hall.
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CHAPTER 90
ZEPHYR
There are two Leeches outside of the Motherboard Room.
And on the floor in front of them, lying in a pool of blood, is Sketch.
“Something isn’t right about that,” Meadow whispers in my ear, and I agree. So far it’s been way too easy. It’s like they want us to walk right into a trap.
“There’s a code to get inside the room,” Lark says.
“74B87K23H9,” Meadow whispers. “We didn’t come here unprepared.”
“The Resistance is helping you. But they’re foolish, all of them. The code alone won’t get you in. There’s a catalogue scanner. A retinal scanner. A voice scanner.”
“Programmed for who?” Meadow asks.
We both already know the answer.
“The Commander,” Lark says. “And me, of course. He thinks I deleted my entry codes. But I installed a back door, as anyone with a brain would.” She coughs into her sleeve. “But I won’t let you in. Not unless I get something in return.”
Meadow tenses. She pulls out her gun, polishes the barrel on her shirt. “What do you want, Lark?”
Lark. She doesn’t even call her Mother. Skitz, it’s great, and I want to smile, but I hold it back for her sake.
“Let me leave,” Lark says. “Let me out of here alive, and you’ll never see me again. They got what they needed. I reset the system, gave them full control. They’ll kill me now, the first chance they get. I have . . . collateral.” She steps closer to Meadow. “They seem to think time has changed me.” Her eyes glaze over for a second, and she does that strange wobbling thing on her feet again. “Sweet girl . . . would you let your own mother die?”
“My mother died a long time ago,” Meadow says. “You have your deal. Now get us inside so we can shut this thing down.”
The guards pace back and forth, waiting, like spiders on a web.
Lark points at Meadow’s gun. Shoot them, she mouths.
Meadow nods. She lets two bullets fly, one right after the other.
The guards drop. I run to Sketch, drop to her side, and untie her while Meadow pulls the bag from her head. She’s still alive.
“’Bout time, assholes,” she says. She looks over my shoulder at Lark.
“Not yet, Sketch,” I warn her. “We need her.”
“Like skitz we do,” she groans. Her leg’s dripping blood, so Meadow takes the bag that was over her head, rips it, and bandages Sketch’s wound. “Lost too much blood. They got me good, with some kind of red knife.”
“I designed that myself.” Lark smiles, a look of wonder on her face. “It reverses the nanite’s healing process. You’ll probably die soon.” She enters the codes on a massive panel embedded in the door.
The room opens with a hiss. A red glow pours out.
Meadow and I haul Sketch inside.
“You good?” I ask her.
She grunts. “Better than you, Zero. You look like hell.”
The door slides shut behind us. The room is circular, with enough empty seats to hold a hundred people, at least. Sketch collapses into a chair, breathing hard. “What the flux is that thing?” She points at the far wall.
It’s lit up a dark, bleeding red. Bar codes soar across it. They’re constantly moving, changing places. In the center is the Initiative eye. Beneath it, at the bottom of the wall, is a line that wavers up and down, up and down.
“It’s measuring a heartbeat,” I say. “Look at it. It’s connected to someone!”
But Meadow’s too focused on her mom to listen to me.
“I created Her a long time ago,” Lark says. Her, like the Murder Complex is fluxing a human being. I sway, and slide down into the chair next to Sketch.
“How do we shut it down?” Meadow asks. She walks across the room, taps the massive computer screen. The barcodes keep soaring and sliding and changing. They never stop. Skitz, I wonder how many citizens this thing’s killed, how many like me it’s controlled.
Meadow pulls out her gun, loads another clip from her belt, and shoots.
The bullet hits the eye, but evaporates instantly. It’s gone. Just gone, in a puff of smoke. Meadow gasps.
“She has an impenetrable protection system,” Lark says. “Bullets don’t work. Water or fire won’t stop her. You cannot unplug her, or shatter her, or shut her down. She’s my greatest creation, Meadow. And my greatest regret.”
“You regret nothing,” Meadow snarls. “You love the Murder Complex. You’re staring at it like it’s your child.”
Lark shifts. Looks down at her toes. “A mother always loves her child, even if she becomes a monster.”
“You never loved me.” Meadow sinks down to the floor and puts her head between her knees.
“They said there would be a Protector,” Sketch growls beside me.
“There is a Protector,” Lark says, shaking her head. “And that’s the worst part about all of it.”
Meadow stands up. “Who is it?” she asks.
I can see it all clicking into place. I can see the answer.
Lark looks at Meadow. Meadow looks back at her, and when Lark speaks, there are tears in her eyes.
“You’re the Protector, Meadow. In order for the Motherboard to be shut down, in order to stop the Murder Complex . . . you have to die.”
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CHAPTER 91
MEADOW
I have survived this long because of my father. He taught me that in a world full of death, living was a beautiful thing.
I fought for each day because of him. I always did what I had to do to stay alive.
And now, as I stare at the Motherboard and realize that its destruction lies within me, I want to die.
“You’re sick,” I hear Zephyr say.
“You deserve to rot in hell for eternity,” says Sketch.
I have a gun in my hand, and a bullet lodged in the chamber.
“How did you do it?” I ask my mother. “How did you link it to . . . me?”
“Your brain,” she says. “When you were a baby, I programmed your brain to the Murder Complex. When you die, the system does, too. I’ve been implanted, too. It’s brilliant, really. If the Initiative kills me, the system will throw all of them in. The lottery will choose them, and they will all die.”
“Why?” I ask. “How could you do this to me?”
“I did it to both of us, Meadow. We’ve always been in this together, you and me. But for you, especially, I did it because I knew that someday I might feel regret or even guilt. I might want to undo everything . . . shut it down. But it is the only way to keep it all alive, Meadow. Don’t you see?” She rubs her hands together, lets out a crazed giggle. “Someday, the Initiative is going to take the Murder Complex everywhere. I’ll save the earth, and not just our little piece of it.”
She sways. “You have to understand, some days, I wanted to destroy it all. But you,” she says, reaching out to touch my cheek. I flinch away. “You, I could never regret. You I could never destroy.”
I am strangely calm, as her words settle in. This is why the Initiative hasn’t tried to kill me. This is why they let me come to them on my own terms.
“My father told me that someone keeps trying to put me into the system. Someone wants me dead. Is this why? Because they know what you did to me?”
My mother nods, a strange, haunting look on her face. “I kept it secret for as long as I could so you could live a normal life.”
“Normal?” I can’t help but laugh. “Nothing is normal in the Shallows.”
“It’s your sister, isn’t it?” Zephyr asks. “Your sister is the person who wants Meadow to die. She’s the good one. Not you.”
“Don’t talk about my sister!” my mother screams at Zephyr.
I wonder how they’ll keep me alive after the Cure fails me. Will they take out my brain and keep it sealed inside of a jar?
“Let me kill Lark,” I hear Sketch say. “Let me cut her eyes out!” She staggers toward my mother but only makes it halfway. She falls to the floor, unconscious.
Everything is ruined. “It’s over,” I say.
“Meadow.” Zephyr’s voice is so full of pain. He looks at me, and I look back at him, and I know what he is thinking.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I want to die. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything.
I turn to him and press the gun to his sweaty palm. “You do it,” I say. “Please. I’m begging you.”
“No.” The gun falls to the floor. “Never.”
“I want it to be you,” I say. “It has to be you.”
My mother is standing in the corner, watching us. “Don’t do it, Meadow,” she says. “Think about your little sister. Think about your brother. They need you.”
“It’s not worth it!” Zephyr says. He is trembling now, pressing his hands to my cheeks, holding me too tight. “Let the world die. You don’t have a choice.”
“I have always had a choice, Zephyr,” I say.
I bend down and pick up the gun. He moves for it, but I turn it around and point it at him. “Stay back,” I say through tears. He keeps coming for me anyway, until the gun is pressed against his chest. “Zephyr, please. I want this. I have to do this.” I stare into his eyes, will them to memory, and hope that in the afterlife, I will remember their soft green color. As I turn the gun toward myself, ready to fix what my mother broke, I hear the one sound in the world that can stop me right now.
Peri’s scream.
We race outside, across the hall. I shoot the door handle, kick it open, run down a long, winding hall. There are guards at every turn, and I take them all out. “There it is!” my mother screams, and finally, I see two doors at the end of the hallway. We slam through. My mother uses the rifle, shoots with an effortless grace, taking down one guard, then another, then two with a single deadly shot.
There are cells lining the room. I scream at the prisoners, “Where is she? Where?” They shake their heads and stare back, frail and skeletal, as if they don’t know how to speak anymore.
Peri screams again. She’s close, somewhere inside.
The scent of human waste and death fills my lungs, burns through me like hot acid, and suddenly I hear the beep of a keypad. I round the corner past a cell, where the room ends. There’s another door. It slams shut just before I reach it.
I shoot the lock and yank it open.
And there is light. Outside. I see the Perimeter in the distance.
Thick bars block my exit.
“Peri!”
I can’t get through. I can’t get to her. A guard drags her across the grass. She’s kicking and screaming. Rage surges through me.
Because I am too late.
Her pale eyes meet mine just before the guard reaches an armored truck and throws her inside. The sun appears from behind a cloud and for a moment I am blinded.
“It’s over, Meadow. She’s too far away,” my mother says beside me. I lower my dagger.
The truck door slams shut. A door in the Perimeter slides open, and for one second, I see the outside world.
Everything is green. Alive.
The truck hurtles through.
The Perimeter closes.
“No!”
Peri is gone.
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CHAPTER 94
&
nbsp; ZEPHYR
The only way out is to go back the way we came in.
Meadow rounds on her mother once we’re back in the main hall.
“Where did they take her? Tell me!”
“To the Ridge,” she says. “Up north.”
“North, where?” Meadow screams. She points her dagger at her mother. A drop of blood drips from its tip and splatters onto the floor like a raindrop.
“We aren’t the only testing site, Meadow. There are two others, one for genetic mutation and the other for breeding. The Ridge is a good place. Peri will be happy there.”
“How can you say that?” Meadow snarls. “She’s your daughter.”
Lark sighs. Deep wrinkles line her filthy face. “You will never understand, Meadow, so don’t ask me to explain it to you. You’re not smart enough, dear.”
I stumble toward Meadow and put my hand on her shoulder. She flinches like she’s been hit. I pull her into my arms. I kiss her head, tell her I’m sorry, tell her it’s going to be fine.
“We can’t stay here,” her mother says. “They’ll have sent the Patients by now.”
“You make me sick. You’re pathetic. You deserve to die,” Meadow says.
“There is nothing we can do for her now, Meadow. But pray, maybe . . . ”
“Pray?” Meadow throws her arms into the air. “You don’t have a soul!”
Her mom sighs.
“I never should’ve wasted my time saving you, you bitch! You’re already dead to me.”
“Meadow.”
“Get the hell away from me.”
The sirens start wailing again.
“Let’s go.” I pull Meadow with me. She sways and I use the club to hold us both up. My shoulder screams and my head spins. I’ve lost too much blood.
We turn and walk down the hall.
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