“So you know that you have to keep me alive.” I hide my fear from him. I refuse to be weak. “How long are you going to torture me, Interrogator? How long are you going to try to make me scream, beg for you to stop until I give you the information you want?” I swallow, then laugh the way my mother would have. “It’s been far too long. I haven’t bent. I haven’t broken. You can burn me with fire and pierce me with knives, but I will never tell.”
“Our doctors are working on a surgery,” he says. “We might not be able to remove the connection from your brain. . . . Your mother’s work was beautiful. Brilliant.” His eyes glitter, like he worships my mother. I imagine most of the Initiative does, in a way. “But in due time, Miss Woodson, we might be able to control you. Patient Zero, as you may well know, could use a perfect counterpart. You are in our top group of candidates.”
I stop breathing. Stop feeling fear.
Now it is only hate.
He kneels down in front of me and puts his hand on my cheek. I will not flinch. I will not show weakness. “They said you were a strong one, and you’ve proven them all right.” He taps the tip of my nose with the fork. It’s cold. “This method isn’t for you.”
The Interrogator stands, lifts his arm to his wrist before he speaks again. “Bring her in.”
Cold sweat trickles its way down my back. I wait, and as minutes pass, I hear commotion outside of the room. A voice shouting, and the sound of Initiative boots on hard ground.
The door outside of my cell swings open, and two guards drag a hooded, writhing girl into the room.
“Just wait till I get my hands on you, you fluxing ChumHeads!”
I recognize that voice. I haven’t heard it in . . .
I press my face to the bars as they rip the hood from her head, and the sight of her, alive, is enough to bring a smile to my face.
It’s Sketch.
CHAPTER 7
ZEPHYR
When I come to, it’s dark.
And wherever I am, it smells like crap.
The Graveyard.
I sit up. My head wobbles like crazy. I have flashes of what I think are memories from my time under the Murder Complex. Lark’s laugh, her wild eyes. Blood on my hands, a trigger squeezed, a scream splitting the night.
Somewhere in the distance I hear voices, a twang and a smack that sort of sounds like someone throwing knives. Then footsteps, coming toward me.
I lie back down and pretend like I’m still out of it, because I don’t want to talk right now. I don’t want to explain myself.
Someone flips on a lantern.
“You can stop pretending,” a voice says. It’s light and airy, a young girl. Dex.
I groan and open my eyes. Dex has blonde hair, in dreadlocks that hang to her shoulders. She’s small but strong, and she might be half insane. She’s several years younger than me; maybe fourteen at the most. And she has two different colored eyes. One blue like Talan’s, one green, like mine.
Dex sits down next to me and sets the lantern right by my head. It’s too bright.
“Get that thing out of here,” I groan.
“So the kamikaze awakens,” Dex says. She bites her bottom lip, tilts her head sideways. “You know, I warned Rhone that you weren’t ready to go out so close to the Dark Time alone. You think you’ve got a hold on the system, Zephyr, but you’re wrong. You’re getting weaker, the longer you’re away from Meadow.” She sighs, cracks her knuckles. “Ah, whatever. You’re back to normal now, I guess. It’s all in the eyes.”
I’ve been living with Dex for weeks and it only now hits me that she reminds me of Talan. A mouth that just won’t quit. “Where’s Rhone?” I ask. My head feels heavy. “I need to talk to him.”
I can see now that I’m back in what we call the Shack. Rounded tunnel walls, water dripping down the sides. The awful smell of sewage. And in the distance, the sounds of the Graveyard. Seagulls cawing, the hisses and clicks of cockroaches, and sometimes, faraway screams.
I relax. At least I’m safe. For now.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
Dex smiles. “I’m always watching you, Zephyr.”
I laugh. If anyone else said something so creepy, I’d be freaked out of my mind. But Dex is just . . . Dex. There’s something sort of comforting, something Talan-like, about the crazy side of this little girl. It shows up at random and usually inappropriate times. She’s the comic relief in the middle of such a dark, screwed-up world.
Dex points beside me, on the concrete floor, where there’s a half-eaten chunk of bread. I scoop it up and devour the thing. It’s dry and it tastes terrible, but as soon as it’s gone I want more.
“Anyways . . .” Dex says, giggling at me, “I’ll get Rhone.”
“I’m already here,” a guy says from the shadows. He comes closer to the light. Black hair. Piercing blue eyes. Solid Leech-like shoulders.
“Rhone,” I say, and I try to stand but my legs buckle. Dex helps me back down, pats my head like I’m her pet dog. “I controlled it. I finally got to choose my victim, like we’ve been practicing.”
Rhone chuckles under his breath, runs a hand through his dark hair. “Yeah, that’s great and all, Zero, but you chose the entire Leech Compound as your victim.”
“I . . . what?”
I try to piece together what happened last night, but it’s all fragments. That’s something that will probably never change. I think I remember. . . .
“Lark,” I whisper. “She triggered it a second time on me. It was like she used some sort of remote trigger on me. Some sort of phrase or something.”
Rhone nods, scratches his chin, and in reality that means he’s thinking, Yeah, okay, Zero. Suuuure.
Dex giggles again. “It’s lucky we found you before the Leeches did. I wasted my last ounce of chloroform on your sorry self, you know.”
“How did you even get that?” I ask. Then I remember Lark again, our encounter on the beach. “Did you find Lark?”
Rhone shakes his head. “I would have. But your little episode sort of took the lead on the mission, Zero.” He shrugs. “You should rest. We’ll regroup later today.”
He’s wrong.
I don’t need to rest at all. I have a rescue mission to plan. I have Leeches to kill, and Lark, the creator of the system, to find.
“We have one week left,” I whisper, as Rhone turns to leave.
“Actually, we have six days,” Dex corrects me.
Rhone throws her a look that could kill.
I think back to weeks ago, when Meadow was first lost to me. I barely made it back to the Resistance, to their Headquarters underground, with a gaping hole in my head. Dex, and the nanites in my system, nursed me back to health, and when I was ready, I recounted everything that happened inside of the Leech building.
How our partner, Sketch, was left behind, bleeding out. How Lark escaped, and is nowhere to be found. How Talan died. The way the light in her eyes went out, the way she shouted her daughter’s name with her very last breath.
But I held one detail back.
I didn’t tell them what I still hold close to me now, the one thing I swore to myself I’d never tell.