Destroyed

by Madeline Dyer

  They rise like mist, inside me. Creatures, creatures everywhere. The beetles, the ones I’ve already taken, the addiction-ridden parasites, they rise. They burst out of the Sarrs, spew hot acidic liquid inside me.

  I gasp, and they keep rising, keep coming.

  And no spirits—why no spirits? The Lost Souls? Can’t they feel my call? Because they promised they’d be here. My own brother and—

  But you killed one of them.

  Is that why they’re not here? My heart lurches. They mostly work as joined beings now. Do they all know what I did? Did Three know all this time that they wouldn’t come, because of it? But he wouldn’t betray me… He’d be here for me, just like he has been. Or are the others stopping him now, stopping him, and Melissa too? Or is it too painful for him to continue operating separately now, away from the others?

  Unless it’s me that’s wrong, my powers, my energy? Because of the beetles….

  “My dear, is something supposed to be happening?” Raleigh laughs, and his laughter curls into me.

  Karl steps forward. “The spirits will not answer to you, Shania, for they have already chosen us.”

  “Shania, do not worry. I know you are confused,” Zahlia says. “But you are doing the right thing.”

  Her words blur in front of me and…and my power. It races out, bolting, like my command did, just like it, following the trail, the footsteps and—

  My layers peel back, and there are insects, so many. Their feet patter all over me, an army, and I feel them everywhere. My skin—I try to swipe them off, but….

  Pain and white light, and my mind, exposed.

  More and more layers.

  I am peeling.

  I am unraveling. Every part of me is unraveling.

  No!

  I jolt, and my vision streaks. I see Raleigh in front of me, looking at me. Then he’s gone. There’s darkness for a moment, but I hear Corin shouting.

  No! Hold onto the power!

  Pull it back!

  Keep it!

  I reach for the power, countless hands inside me stretching, yearning. Energy burns me, and the air is heavy, nothing moving, and—

  So much pain.

  Corin slides in front of me. “Stay back,” he yells, pointing the gun at Raleigh.

  “That weapon would do you more harm than me.”

  “Raleigh, sit down. Zahlia, secure the girl and—”

  The beetles, they’re crawling all over me, and they’ve got teeth. Thousands of teeth, and they’re biting, and I can’t get them off. No!

  No! Get your power back!

  “Shania, it is okay,” Zahlia says, and she’s still holding her arms out for me, as if I’m a little child who’s going to run into them.

  “Stay away!” I yell, and Corin’s shouting too, waving the gun about, and the Enhanced aren’t moving any closer.

  My heart pounds, and my powers, they’re leaking out in broken shards. I don’t understand. The Sarrs, they’re not enough. They can’t…they need me.

  But the insects….

  Ignore them!

  Corin’s yelling at the Enhanced, and Karl and Raleigh are shouting at each other, but there are too many voices tangling together. I need to concentrate. Yes. My powers—yes, got to… Pain fills my jaw as I pour every last bit of my soul, my strength into reigning my powers back in. Pain filters through me, and the black beetles are everywhere again, their bodies shiny, pulsing over me.

  The Sarrs step forward, guiding me, each reaching a hand out for the energy, the powers, and—

  And, together, we do it, until I’m whole again. My mind, repaired. Only just.

  I try to ignore the beetles, push them out of my mind, tell myself I can’t feel them running all over me.

  “Well,” Raleigh says, and I see him staring at me through my blurry vision. “Thank you for that little display.” He seems to wobble, but I know it’s me, not him. His expression softens.

  Karl is right behind him, Zahlia behind him. Sophie and Akim stand a little way off to the left. The other section leaders are saying things—questions, I think—but all I can concentrate on is Raleigh, on his voice.

  “Shania, just surrender. You’re breaking—can’t you feel it? Your mind is breaking. Look at this logically. You cannot possibly kill all my people—your mind has proven that. So give me yours, for this war has to end and you have chosen today. Surrender and save their lives. Give me the rest of your powers—give me them whole, no broken shards. I am strong enough to control them, unlike you.” His arm shoots out, and he holds Karl back just as he’s trying to step forward, closer to me. “Give them to me, and I’ll break the spirit wall and save everyone in your settlement.”

  The spirit wall? The settlement. Our settlement. He knows about it? Where it is? Our secret?

  My mouth dries.

  He knows.

  He laughs.

  My chest tightens. “Siora and Quinn.” My words are barely a whisper. He’s tracking them. He has to be. He’d compromised them, before I even met them, and I didn’t detect his work. Neither did Taras. He had them imprisoned—they told me!

  And now he knows, he knows where all the Untamed are. He knows. My Untamed, they’re not safe.

  No, they are safe. They are. He can’t get into the settlement without your powers, the spirits won’t answer to him.

  But he has my original spirit-controlling power!

  But that is not enough, the Sarrs say, not to break through such a great wall. He’d need more of your energy to fuel his wish. Just keep your powers, do not let him have any more, and the Untamed are safe.

  I gulp, brush at my arms, quick movements.

  “Of course it was Siora and Quinn.” Raleigh takes a step toward me. A slow, lilting step.

  Corin shouts, but I miss his words, what he says, because there’s a pounding in my ears, my head—and it’s not just my powers moving, breaking, crumbling.

  Raleigh smiles. “Did you really think I wouldn’t be in contact with them? As if I’d send my daughters in alone.”

  His daughters.

  But….

  Raleigh’s lips peel back as he smiles. “You see it now, don’t you?”

  My blood runs cold. I am frozen, I cannot move. My mind just… It’s empty. Like I’m thinking of something, but not.

  “They’re us, Shania,” Raleigh says. “They’re our daughters. Yours and mine. They’re us, and they are so powerful.”

  No.

  No.

  No.

  Mind games. It’s all mind games.

  Is it?

  My head pounds. The light’s reflecting off the polished wooden floor and it suddenly seems too bright. It’s burning holes in my vision.

  I press myself closer to him still as we kiss again. His hands find their way under my shirt and then he’s exploring every inch of my skin, until his touches slide onto the cups of my bra. He squeezes my right breast, firmly, and I gasp, then his other hand’s on my wrist.

  Next, he directs me to touch him, makes my fingers slide over his skin just above the waistband of his shorts. He makes a deep sound in his throat, and then his hands move around to my back, and then down to my bottom. He pulls me against him again, and I feel his body respond against mine, respond in a way that’s—

  “Shut up,” Corin snarls, his voice dark and—

  A gunshot.

  I scream, duck down, heart pounding. Taste gloom and metal and death.

  Look up. Corin’s standing with the gun, standing right next to Raleigh.

  There’s a mark on the wall. The bullet hit it and—

  “Put the gun down.” Karl’s voice is smooth, calm. “Put it down at once.”

  “No.” Raleigh waves a hand. “Let him have it. He’ll do far more damage to his people than ours.”

  “Violence of any means, directed at anyone, is bad,” Zahlia says. “See, Raleigh is corrupt. He should not have set such a curse upon these poor people.”

  “We do what we must,” Ralei
gh growls. “A true leader knows that.”

  “But you are no longer a leader. Zahlia is now the representative of—”

  “No!” Raleigh screams. “I will not be bullied out of this. You need me. I am in too valuable a position for you to lose me.”

  He looks back at me, and I am shaking, shaking so much, I almost can’t take in their words. I know I should, because the Enhanced are arguing, they’re divided—and it’s something we can use.

  But my head spins. Siora and Quinn?

  I look to Corin, but he doesn’t look at me. He’s staring at Raleigh.

  “No,” I say. My hand lifts, and I’m pointing at him. “You’re lying. They’re not yours. I’d never be with you. Never have children with you.”

  My stomach roils. For a moment, I think I’m going to be sick. Feel hotness rising inside me, pushing and pushing.

  “Why is it so hard to believe we’d have children?” Raleigh steps closer to me. “You had no problem spending the night with me before.”

  Corin’s head snaps toward me. I see his eyes, the look in them, the anger, the confusion.

  “No!” I yell, and I don’t know whether I’m yelling it at him or Raleigh. Or both. “No!” Then I’m screaming, screaming so much something moves inside me. Power. It’s rearing up, recognizing my distress.

  It wants to fight.

  And it would be so easy to let it all out, to watch it rip Raleigh to shreds.

  And all the Untamed.

  And myself.

  End the war that way. End the suffering.

  But the Enhanced would win.

  “Don’t lie to him, Shania,” Raleigh says. He walks along the length of the table, his back to me, then turns around, returns. It is silent except for his footsteps, Corin’s ragged breathing, and my pounding heart. Raleigh stops in front of me. “You slept curled up in my arms at New Kitembu.”

  “Because you tricked me!” I roar, and the volume of my voice shakes me, grates on everything inside. My powers—they stir again, feel stronger, begging to be let out, to get away from the insects, because there are so many inside me.

  But I can’t. I can’t let them out.

  The other Sarrs and I, we only just managed to contain the powers, stopped them leaving me, got some sort of stability again. If I release them, I’ll never get them back, will I?

  “More evidence of unorthodox behavior,” Karl hisses. “Zahlia, did you know of this?”

  She shakes her head, and Raleigh laughs before looking back at me.

  “You felt safe with me, didn’t you, Shania?” Raleigh’s mirrors flash, and his voice is lazy. He looks to my left, where Corin is. “She’d never felt safer, than with me.”

  Corin makes a choking sound. The section leaders speak in fast voices, and I can’t keep up.

  “It wasn’t like that,” I bite out through gritted teeth, but I can’t finish the sentence.

  Raleigh smiles, and hatred burns inside me.

  I shake my head so hard things seem to move inside. My powers, my mind, my soul. But my mind isn’t stretching now, it’s getting stronger…isn’t it? I can feel it. Can’t I?

  But I don’t know what I feel. Not now. Not anymore.

  “How?” I whisper. “Siora and Quinn? How are you their father?”

  Raleigh’s lips peel back as he smiles. “Do I really need to explain the intricacies of this?”

  “How?”

  “There are a thousand different possible futures out there. All it took was my new Seer powers and a couple of kavalahs, to help me warp the timelines so the future I wanted was attainable now, and here we are. Siora and Quinn, brought from a future in which you surrendered your people long ago, in which you’d chosen me, and Corin never rescued you from this town all those months ago.

  “And I saved you. In this future—the future I got them from, I stopped your mind exploding at the end of the war. I kept you Untamed so the war could never end and you’d live—but really, it wasn’t a war when you were the only Untamed alive—and we had a family. We had daughters—and now they are here, and I know you’ve bonded with them. Just as I did. Remarkable really. I never felt paternal before, not with my others. I brought Siora and Quinn back here, using my new powers, when I realized you were pulling Untamed to you. And the plan worked. Of course it would. Your powers found them.”

  “No,” I say. “You’re lying. Siora showed me her memory.” She was in Death’s realm. With me.

  “And isn’t she excellent at artistic creation?” He smiles, and my heart drops. Quinn told me Raleigh was interested in Siora’s art.

  Nausea rises, tries to get me, but I squash it down, taste darkness on the back of my teeth. “They’ve been spying for you?” Or the trackers—Quinn’s worries. Was she trying to tell me? Oh Gods.

  “Spying?” Raleigh laughs. “They’re us, Shania. They’re powerful. And the time-pocket certainly caused a challenge, made getting an exact location difficult. But it’s no matter, for the wrinkles in time have smoothed out and we are all on the same strand. I know where the dome is, because I know where they are. I can always find you, and they are you because Life always finds Death—our Gods made sure of my ability to find you.”

  I stare at him, then I look at Corin. I see the hatred burning in his eyes. Then he’s moving. He lifts the gun in his hand, points it straight at Raleigh.

  “Really? Again? Don’t be silly.” Raleigh’s voice is slow.

  “Corin, be careful,” Karl whispers. “Do not wipe out your people.”

  But Corin shakes his head, and I know all he’s seeing and hearing is Raleigh—I just know it.

  Raleigh laughs. “You kill me, and you kill yourself and all the Untamed. What is it? Hundreds of lives, taken by you?”

  I draw my gun. “You don’t care about the Untamed.” I step forward to Corin’s side. He doesn’t look at me. “You’ve been executing them. You don’t care if they die.”

  “That was to get your attention.”

  “You still did it!”

  “I don’t like killing Untamed, but I’ll do it for the greater good, if it means you surrender and save your remaining people sooner. You do care about them,” he says. He turns to Corin. “And you care about Shania. You wouldn’t want to harm her daughters. And you won’t wipe out all your people.”

  “Her name is Seven.” Corin speaks the words slowly, coarsely, like they hurt. “And they’re my children!”

  Raleigh laughs.

  Sweat drips into my eyes as I stare at him. My gun shakes. “You’re lying. This is all a game to you.”

  There’s a humming inside me. A humming that gets stronger and stronger.

  “A game?” Raleigh laughs. “Is that what you call life and death? Well, then, it’s time to play your move, Shania.” He pushes Corin to the side—and I expect Corin to shove him back, to do something, but he doesn’t. “But know that no one plays me and wins.”

  “Raleigh, this has gone too far.” Karl marches forward. “You are playing with them—they are people too. Sophie, have augmenters delivered here at once. And you, Raleigh, get out of here now.”

  Raleigh turns, a slow smile on his face. Then it all happens so quickly.

  A burst of white light.

  Karl falls and—

  The rest of the leaders coil together.

  “Murder, against one of your own?” Akim’s voice shakes. His eyes are wide, and his mirrors seem to swallow everything up.

  “I am in charge,” Raleigh roars. He points at Akim. “I am our most powerful Seer, the Section’s only Seer. I can kill you all in an instant if I feel you are not supporting me.” His finger turns to Zahlia. “How dare you try and usurp me. How dare you.”

  Corin’s at my side still, and I turn to him. I see the look in his eyes, one that bores deep inside me, and too many things are going on. Far too many things.

  “It’s not true,” I say to him. “It’s not. The girls… He’s lying.”

  Raleigh clears his throat and then I fin
d he’s looking at me. The rest of the Section are huddled at the back of the room. Sophie has her back partly to Raleigh, to me, but I hear her voice. Low. Speaking on a radio? Getting help… more Enhanced in here? Or the augmenters?

  Raleigh crosses the floor toward me and Corin. “I’m sure you’ve worked this out, Shania. Your daughters may be from a future where events leading to the end of the war are very different, but nonetheless, they are here. And they are here now, in this timeline. If you don’t surrender, give me access to all your powers, and let the Chosen live, your daughters will not exist. They cannot—not unless I live, unless we are victorious and both alive. For I can still protect you from Death’s wrath.”

  “You’re not going to win.” I bite out the words through gritted teeth. “And you wouldn’t keep me alive and prolong a war. You said it yourself! If all the Untamed die, you’d kill me instantly, so you’d win the war.”

  He tilts his head to one side. “Yes, I did say that. For saying I would keep you alive and converted would invite too many questions from you at that point, and family conversations, like this, should always be done in person.”

  I snort. It’s a lie. He’s desperate. It’s all made up. Siora and Quinn aren’t his—they can’t be. He’s just decided this now—a last resort. He can’t protect me from Death’s plans. No one can.

  “You do not believe me?” Raleigh’s words seem to roll toward me. “You don’t think I would keep you alive, let you live? You think I do not care about Siora and Quinn, that I do not want them to live?”

  “You don’t care about your children. We both know that.” I take a step forward. “I’m not going to choose you. The Enhanced are not going to win.”

  “Your daughters mean that little to you? Come on, Shania. I know you. You wouldn’t take away your children’s lives like that. Just as you wouldn’t kill me now when it would mean murdering them in cold blood because you’re selfish and want your people to win?” He steps to the side, and he moves like he’s weightless. “Shania, they are you. Your children, your flesh and blood. It’s proof of the life we can have, the life you can have.”

  I stare at him. Your children.

  He doesn’t say our.