I told myself I wouldn’t let him get closer to me. There is no room for anyone else, not now, not ever.
But his words shatter my walls. My body takes over, and it’s full of want, need, now.
I reach out, grab Zephyr by the shirt collar, and yank him toward me with all the strength I have left.
Our lips touch, and there’s fire inside of me.
I feel him groan, feel his mouth press harder against mine. He pulls me down on top of him, and I become a burning flame that wants to devour more, more, all of him, always. But when I slide my fingers beneath his shirt and run my hands across his chest, he pulls away.
“I can’t do this,” he says.
“Do what?” I ask. “Don’t you want this? I can feel your heart beating as fast as mine.”
I press my forehead against his; kiss him again, and for a few seconds, he kisses back even harder than before. I’m breathless. Wanting him, even though I don’t know why. The kiss breaks as Zephyr pulls away.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I did it,” he whispers, and then he gasps, like he’s shocked by his words.
“Did what?” I ask.
He won’t look at me. His lips are out of reach.
When he speaks, his words ignite a flame in me again.
But it isn’t a good fire.
“I killed your mother,” Zephyr says. “I’m the one who shot that arrow.”
The fire is hot and heavy.
It’s so angry it could burn down the entire world.
CHAPTER 56
ZEPHYR
She doesn’t speak to me.
She stumbles the whole way back to the Outpost, tripping over her own feet as she goes.
Blood drips from her nose, and stars, I want to help her.
But Meadow is beyond help.
“You hated her,” I say to her back. “Why does it matter that she’s dead?”
No answer. Just the stomping of her boots as she struggles to get back to the others.
“I did it because it was the only way, Meadow. If she didn’t die, then the Patients wouldn’t have gone after the Leeches. We escaped. We’re here, and we’re going to find your family.”
Finally, she whirls around. Her eyes are wild, and for a second, she looks so much like Lark that I freeze. “She was my family,” she says. “Regardless of what she did, what she became. She was my mother.”
“You’re confusing mother with monster,” I say to her back.
She whirls around, flings her dagger so fast I don’t have time to be shocked.
It grazes my face, then clatters to the ground behind me.
I feel hot blood as the fresh cut opens.
“You missed!” I yell at Meadow’s back.
She stops before the door to the Outpost, turns again to look at me. Stars, she’s beautiful. And terrifying. “I meant to,” she says.
I throw my hands up. “So why don’t you kill me, then?”
There’s sadness in her eyes. “If I wanted to kill you, Zephyr, you’d already be dead.” The guards raise the gate for her. “Keep him out,” she says.
They lower it before I can get there.
“Really, guys?” I ask.
Sasha is one of them. “Trouble in paradise?” she asks. I nod, motion to the gates. “The General’s orders. What the girl says, goes. Sorry.”
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll just stay out here, then, and bother you until you let me in.”
She shrugs, from the other side of the gate. “Try me.”
I slide to the ground with my back up against the wall.
I don’t get a wink of sleep all night.
CHAPTER 57
MEADOW
Morning comes, and I am staring at my mother.
She stares back at me.
When I move, she moves. When I stumble sideways, she stumbles, too. When my nose drips blood, she lifts her hand to wipe it away.
Her eyes are heavy, dark half-moons beneath them weighing them down. She smiles, and her teeth are blackened. My teeth are blackened, from something Ray’s wife used.
The New Militia has dressed me in Initiative clothes, all black. They have made me look older, somehow. Martha, Ray’s wife, has altered my Catalogue Number to match hers. I held my screams to myself, while she tattooed a new number 8 over my number zero, and the Cure has already healed it. The Catalogue Number looks fresh and new.
My mother and I were only one number different.
It wasn’t that hard to do, with the right tools.
“Flux,” Sketch breathes. She steps beside me into the small bathroom, stares into the cracked mirror. “Woodson, I swear, you look just like her. I kind of want to kill you now.”
“Zephyr already did that for the both of us,” I whisper. Anger flares in my heart, threatens to burst from the inside out.
Sketch sighs. “Get it over it. He did what he had to do. You would have done the same thing, right?”
“Before capture, I wanted to kill her,” I say. “What she did to the world is unforgivable. But after all the torture . . . She went through what we went through, Sketch. But we endured it for weeks. She endured it for years. It changed her. It would change anyone.” I lean against the wall, stare at myself as my mother, and sigh. “Can we come back from the things we’ve done in this world?”
“I don’t know.” Sketch shrugs. She runs her hands down the scars that line her arms, tallies of all the victims she’s killed, under the influence of the system. “But even if we can, I think there’s some of us that wouldn’t make the choice to.” She looks at me in the mirror. “You might hate your mother for what she did to the world, Meadow. But deep down, you’re a killer just like her. We’re all killers. And we like being that way.”
She’s right.
Because of the system, I sway the way my mother used to sway. Because of the torture, I can harness the cold, hard hatred that blackened her heart.
I can become her.
I have become her.
And no one will stand in my way.
CHAPTER 58
ZEPHYR
I’m sitting on the edge of the roof, letting my legs dangle over the world, when Sketch finds me.
“Thinking of jumping?” she asks.
She sits down beside me, hangs her scarred legs over the edge. The wind is strong. It tugs at the laces on our boots, almost like it’s whispering for us to just lean a little farther out.
Fall into the abyss.
“Why are we doing this, Sketch?” I ask.
Birds fly overhead, just a few black splotches that disappear into the dark clouds.
Sketch doesn’t answer, so I go on.
“Why are we staying with her? She doesn’t want us. She’s going to die in there. I can feel it. If we follow her, we’ll die, too. This whole mission is suicide.”