CHAPTER 10
MEADOW
We have not eaten in two days.
At first, Sketch and I made a game out of our growling stomachs, laughing every time it happened, seeing whose would growl louder and longer.
But now the laughter has faded.
And a desperate hunger has taken its place. It reminds me of when I found my mother, how she was skin and bones, sunken eyes and cheeks.
If I were to look at my reflection, is that what I would see? A younger version of my mother, staring back? Sometimes, I feel a darkness lurking beneath the surface of my soul. Sometimes, I imagine I hear voices, whispering in my ears. They tell me that I am weakening. They tell me that soon, I will lose this fight.
Sometimes, I almost talk back.
It is my mother’s insanity, the same force that once took ahold on her. And now it is after me.
I am carving another line into my calf when the Interrogator comes. He brings a whip with prongs on the ends, and lashes Sketch’s back until she bleeds into unconsciousness. The next day, with another line carved, he turns on me.
Sketch and I wake, hours later, healed from the nanites, but broken down a little bit more.
Now, we sit in darkness.
“It’s so damn cold,” Sketch groans.
“Ignore it,” I say, even though everything has become numb. My lips, my toes, my ears, and I long for the warm sand, the sun on my skin, the ocean water in the afternoon heat. “Just pretend we aren’t here.”
But she is right.
The chill of the air has begun to seep its way into my bones. I am afraid that if I move, I will shatter like glass.
Sometimes, Sketch falls asleep. I keep her awake by mumbling her name or singing songs that my mother used to sing when I was only a child. Back when we were on the houseboat, safe and sound.
Now, that safety has burned to ashes, buried beneath the sea.
“I’m gonna die in here,” Sketch says. “They’ll keep you alive because they have to. But me? I ain’t worth nothing. They’ll kill me soon.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper. “That’s what they want you to believe. You have to be strong.”
“Strength is just an illusion, Protector.”
“Don’t call me that.” I shake my head. I want to tell her what my father would tell me: that strength, in the face of fear, is the only thing that will keep us alive. But the Initiative is always listening, watching.
I will not give them my father’s words.
“Can you keep a secret?” Sketch asks.
“Yes. You should know that by now. I think both of us are pretty good at keeping secrets, Sketch.”
“Prisoner humor,” she says. “Nice.” She swallows, and I can hear it, like rocks grating against each other. The heretics fork is still stuck to her throat. Dried blood has crusted on her skin. When she starts to drop her head, I remind her to stop, remind her that she’s strong enough to keep her head held high, because I know the pain that will come if she lowers it is my fault.
Sketch is only here because of me.
“I want to die,” Sketch says. She doesn’t sound sad or upset. It is an honest admission, a brave thing to tell. “I wish I were dead.”
“Then you’re lucky. Because I have a theory that we’re already in hell.”
I think of Zephyr, the time I found him lying half-dead on the street. He wanted to die so badly he tried to kill himself. Sketch has killed countless people while under the influence of the Murder Complex. I guess every Patient welcomes their own death at some point, and now, I understand.
Because I want to die, too.
The Murder Complex is connected to my brain. Every second I live and breathe, it thrives along with me. Every time my heart beats, I imagine the system sucking the life out of me.
A leech.
The Wards are right to call the Initiative that.
The door swings open behind me, and the Interrogator walks in. He unlocks the cell and glides in, then removes the fork from Sketch’s neck.
She gasps and drops her head, sucking in gulps. “I was just starting to like it,” she groans, defiant as ever. She lifts her head and gives the Interrogator a glittering smile.
“Where is the Resistance hiding?” he asks. Sketch does not answer, does not move an inch.
He slaps her face. She laughs.
He turns to me, black eyes dark as coal. I wish I had my father’s dagger. I don’t know what they did with it, but I feel naked without the solidity of steel against my thigh.
“Where is the Resistance hiding?”
“There is no Resistance,” I say.
He throws his head back and laughs. “You have your mother’s humor, I see. Where is she hiding?”
“My mother is not my concern anymore,” I say, and it is the same answer I will always give him, no matter what he does. Because in my heart, she died years ago. If she were still the mother I used to know, she would have come to save me by now.
She would never have left this building until she watched me escape first, until she knew that I was safe. She would have given herself up before anyone touched me.
But she didn’t.
She ran, like a coward. And she’s not coming back.
“You’ll get nothing from us,” I say. “Never.”
“We’ll die before we tell you anything,” Sketch adds.
The Interrogator shrugs. “You’ll probably die,” he says to Sketch. Then he leans up against the bars so he can look right into my eyes. “But you, Meadow Woodson, will never get the luxury of death.”
He leaves, slamming the door behind him as he goes.
He thinks he can win. He thinks that, battle after battle, he is peeling away the tough layers that surround me, forcing my answers out of hiding.
But there is something the Interrogator did not account for.
In this war, I am the strongest soldier.
I am my father’s daughter, and I refuse to break.
CHAPTER 11
ZEPHYR
I can’t look at the woman.
Sparrow.
Lark’s sister. Because a memory hits me as Rhone and I drag her back to our camp. It was something Meadow said, a long time ago. About her aunt being the one who put Meadow’s name into the system.
Sparrow is the one who sent me after Meadow.
Sparrow is the one who tried, time and time again, to get me to kill the girl I love. She passes out by the time we’ve made it back to our camp. Rhone and Dex force me to leave her, say I can come back later, when she’s awake.
And I will.
I’m going to get my answers from this woman.
CHAPTER 12
MEADOW
I know how to deal with pain.
My father taught me how to take it and twist it to my advantage, to fuel off of it the way a soft wind can stoke a fire.
They took Sketch away, and now, I am the only prisoner here, hanging upside down by my ankles, on some sort of table. The Interrogator asks me a question, and when I do not answer, he touches a scalding hot knife to my bare skin. The room is still freezing, and when he puts the blade to my neck, I see a trail of smoke, hear the sizzle and pop of my cold skin touching hot steel.
“Where is Patient Zero?” he asks me.