Nine

by Rachelle Dekker

  Seeley did as he was told.

  “Good work out there.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Seriously, all the work you did here doesn’t go unrecognized. Without your intel about Number Nine’s breakthrough after the barn raid, we’d still be lost in the woods.”

  Seeley couldn’t shake the feeling that something unpleasant was tied to the end of Hammon’s compliments.

  “But you fired on army personnel, Agent,” Hammon said. “Can you explain to me why you did that?”

  Seeley swallowed. He’d been thinking about it himself. He wanted to say it was to protect the bigger picture, nothing else, but he knew that wasn’t completely true. “Lucy—”

  “We’ll refer to her as Number Nine from now on,” Hammon said.

  “She’d just had a breakthrough with Zoe guiding her,” Seeley said. “I knew if the army got their hands on them, then all of that progress might be lost. We’re still fighting against a clock. And I had the situation under control.”

  “That doesn’t excuse shooting at soldiers,” Hammon said. “At least the president and secretary of defense don’t believe so.”

  “What are you saying?” Seeley asked.

  “I’m saying you are walking an unbelievably thin line here.”

  “They barged in on us. You said I had time.”

  “No, I said I would do what I could but made no promises.” Hammon sighed as Seeley sat back against his chair. “You should have surrendered when the army showed up. They outrank you. Those are the rules.”

  “We’re beyond rules! The situation we are in calls for doing things outside of the box.”

  “Not killing soldiers!”

  Seeley stood. “I made sure to avoid—”

  “Number Nine took down seven armed men,” Hammon cut in, standing to match Seeley’s defensive stance. “The chief of the army believes if you’d followed protocol, she could have been apprehended and lives wouldn’t have been lost. He whispers in the president’s ear, and now he is saying the FBI and its leadership have been unable to control this situation. Your actions are coming back to bite me, so sit down and hold your tongue, Agent! I am still your commanding officer!”

  Seeley bit back his frustration and obeyed. Hammon exhaled and returned to his seat as well. He gathered his temper and continued.

  “Look, what you did was crucial to apprehending Number Nine. Without your call we’d still be searching for her, and we wouldn’t have the information needed to finally get through to her. So for those reasons you aren’t in a holding cell right now.”

  Again, Seeley held his anger at bay.

  “The president wants you off this case,” Hammon said.

  “Sir—”

  “You shot at army soldiers, Agent. What did you think the end result would be?”

  He hadn’t been thinking about that much. He’d been reacting to a situation he was thrown into without warning, doing what he thought was best for the assignment. He ignored the small voice that said he was also protecting Zoe, even though a few hours later he’d turned her and Lucy over to the FBI. The inner conflict raged on.

  Hammon exhaled and rubbed his temple with his fingers. “You’re an exceptional agent, Tom, but you made a mistake, and I put my reputation on the line to protect you from a worse fate than being blacklisted from this assignment. Don’t make me regret it by causing a scene.”

  Blacklisted. The word sent shivers of anger down Seeley’s spine.

  “Why don’t you take a couple days off? Go get some sleep, some real food, see your daughter,” Hammon said. “We have it from here.”

  “I’d like to see it through,” Seeley said.

  “I’m afraid that’s no longer an option.”

  “Sir—”

  “That’s an order, Agent Seeley,” Hammon snapped. He returned his attention to the files before him.

  Seeley just sat there for a long moment, unsure of what to do next.

  Without glancing up, Hammon said, “That will be all, Agent Seeley.”

  Seeley left the director’s office in a daze. After all he’d given to them, after all he’d sacrificed for the job, they were shutting him out. They wouldn’t have Lucy if it hadn’t been for him. They wouldn’t have caught up with Olivia, they wouldn’t have recovered information from Krum. They’d still be chasing their tails, and this was how they showed their gratitude.

  He walked down the hallway toward the locker rooms. Hammon had suggested taking some time—an order, not a request. Time meant silence and space. It meant stillness, something he avoided because it meant being alone with thoughts that could drown him.

  Even now his mind wandered to Zoe. What might be happening to her right now? He knew they were working off the theory that Lucy would do anything to keep Zoe from harm. He’d given them that information, knowing what it could mean for Zoe. He’d struggled with the choice but ultimately made it in favor of the job.

  Always for the job.

  And now they had taken that from him. The single thing that drove his path. His true north, so without it he’d be alone with the sins of his past. His darkness.

  Seeley shook it off as he grabbed his things and started for the exit. Maybe he would go see Cami. Maybe a couple days would be good. Or maybe the small thread of guilt that was rumbling in his gut would slither into his heart and kill him.

  ZOE’S EYES FLUTTERED open. The side of her face was pressed against the cold stone floor of the cell where they were holding her. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since they dragged her here. She had only been half conscious.

  She tried to push up off the floor, every movement painful. Fresh tears filled her eyes, and she sucked in a tearful gasp as she turned herself over. Her skin was marred with red welts where the plastic pads had been placed. She had thought at some point she would die. It seemed like that much power being pumped into her system would short-circuit the unit and just finish her off.

  But they were giving her something to ensure it didn’t kill her, just made her wish she were dead. Three “sessions,” as Gina was calling them, had been performed. Three times they’d hooked her body up to electric currents, using her pain to incentivize Lucy, and three times it had failed.

  Through the pain Zoe had heard Gina speaking with the others.

  “We’ve just started, but I’m hopeful it won’t take much longer.”

  “They need to rest. Give them the night.”

  “She will remember.”

  “Ensure that one doesn’t die. We need her alive. And clean her up.”

  Zoe couldn’t respond, couldn’t fight. They kept her drugged in the in-between, so everything felt like it was happening in slow motion. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. The pain made her too weak to use her brain, much less her mouth.

  Two men had come earlier at some point, stripped her, washed her, and placed her in a white medical gown. The pain had been excruciating, and what little pride she had left was stripped with her clothes. Dying would be easier than this.

  She considered dying, right there on the cell floor. Could she just stop breathing? Could she find something that would help her do it? Did she have the stomach for it, the resolve?

  The minutes dripped by into hours, and all Zoe had was the silence and her thoughts. Between her mental blackouts she had too much time to hate herself for ending up here.

  But this was the cycle of her life, from one dark moment to the next, as if from the beginning of time she was destined to be someone’s rat in the maze of life. Had she been programmed this way? Had she ever stood a chance of experiencing anything other than betrayal and lies? Was this just what life was?

  Did people get a say in their experiences, or were they just products of what they were born into, taught to be a certain way, and powerless to change?

  Was she just unlucky to have been born to a mother who believed in the devil and the monsters he created? Was she just unfortunate to believe the lie of freedom presented in the form of gr
ace, only to discover that, too, wasn’t real? The world judged and punished her for sharing blood with the damned, though she hadn’t chosen to, and then forced her into a constant state of distrust because people couldn’t be trusted.

  Zoe had known better than to trust Seeley and Gina, but still she’d fallen into a cycle she could have predicted. Maybe she deserved this outcome. Maybe it was the only one.

  “Rules are meant to be followed. Rules keep us safe. You only had one rule—trust no one.” The voice scratched at the inside of her brain like a scurrying rodent. It was a voice she heard only in her darkest moments. Her mother’s.

  Without closing her eyes, Zoe could see the beautiful woman. Thin, elegant, with quiet strength and perfect posture. Drawing the attention of all eyes, like a rose growing in a field of daisies. “I thought I taught you better.”

  Zoe closed her eyes, and a single tear slid down her cheek. She wished she could forget everything her mother had ever taught her. Everything the world had taught her. She wanted to start over, to be fresh and new, not to know the pain that came with the past.

  “Stupid girl, who says you get to be free?” A different voice. Another one she couldn’t shake from the inner workings of her mind no matter how hard she tried. Darker, more terrifying than the first. She’d only heard it a couple of times outside her own imagination, but it carried so much power she would never forget it.

  The devil that had driven her mother, Rose, to insanity. He’d called himself Sylous. He’d lured her, toyed with her heart, called her special, and Rose had believed every word. She’d carried out unspeakable things in his name, things the world had punished her for. Things that had stained her children, and they had been punished as well. The sins of the parents.

  Zoe snapped her eyes open because she didn’t want to see Sylous. It was more than enough to just feel him. Like he had actually entered the room. The hissing of his tongue lapped inside her ears. “Like mother, like daughter.”

  She hated him. Hated her mother for believing his lies. Hated herself for not being born different. The thought struck a chord deep in her gut, the idea of hating oneself so entirely. She couldn’t budge from the idea. It held her tightly as it sank into her bones.

  Her thoughts turned to Stephen. The sweet, innocent little brother she’d failed. After the only world they’d ever known ended and their mother was taken from them, it was just her and Stephen. Wide-eyed and optimistic, he’d always given Zoe hope. Of course, she was Evelyn then, before she listened to the lies of someone else and abandoned her brother.

  The foster system was cruel, more so to two children with their history. For a while they bounced from place to place together, but as they put more distance between them and Haven Valley, Zoe started to realize that the world would never be good to them if they didn’t follow the rules. Blend in. Their crazy stories about monsters, angels, and demons had to stop.

  Dr. Holbert agreed. He helped Zoe become the teen who believed it was better to look after herself and let her brother make his own terrible choices. Because Stephen refused to stop believing in their fantasy.

  He became harder and harder to care for. With everyone telling him he was crazy, he started to believe it. And when another boy came along, older and sinister, Stephen followed him to the ends of the earth. Zoe couldn’t persuade him to stop. Couldn’t get him to listen.

  So she did as instructed by those who claimed to have her best interests at heart. She stopped trying. She even transferred to another home, leaving him behind when he refused to join her. And that sinister boy stole Stephen’s goodness and drove her sweet brother into hell with him.

  Because Zoe let it happen. Because she hadn’t been there to save him. It all came flooding back like a tidal wave. One failure into the next as she felt the cold floor beneath her. Her tears soaked into the stone, grief and guilt draining from her bones.

  First she’d failed her mother, then Stephen, now Lucy. That was her story. Cycles of failing people she loved.

  His dark voice returned. The one that chilled her beyond her skin. “There is no freedom from your failure,” he whispered. “Like I said, you don’t get to be free.”

  Whatever was left of her strength broke, and Zoe began to sob. As it carried on, it grew in volume and pain until she was bawling her eyes out, curled up on the cold ground and wishing for it all to end.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THERE I STOOD, unopenable doors to my front, the sound of Zoe screaming overhead, my heart assaulting the inside of my chest. My soul was ripped in half as the tortured pain of the only person I really cared about pierced the barricade that kept me from being able to stop her suffering.

  I dropped to my knees, sweat running down my face, my fingers bloody on the ground, my nails mangled and peeling back. I should feel the pain racing up my arms, but I felt nothing.

  Because they aren’t really my fingers. A small voice had started talking to me, one I knew was my own. It whispered through the chaos. Right, I agreed with the voice, because this is in my mind. When I wake up, my fingers won’t be bloody.

  I knew there was truth there that might help me break down these doors, but I couldn’t focus on it long enough to figure out how. I tried blocking out Zoe’s screams, but even when I succeeded, sounds of my past rushed in to assault me again.

  Another thing I’d discovered: the hundreds of sounds, playing all at once on full volume, were from the past. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I did. As if the sounds themselves had a familiar signature that felt comfortable and known.

  But it didn’t help me get through the blockages that kept me from seeing what I needed. If I could just get one door open.

  Open the doors, Number Nine.

  I gritted my teeth. My throat burned from spitting at the doctor, and it was getting me nowhere. She was running the show. Zoe and I were just pawns. Powerless pawns.

  Not true, the small voice said. The doctor can’t open the doors.

  “Neither can I!” I slammed both fists against the black ground, another wave of screams rippling above. There was no solution. I couldn’t go under the doors, I couldn’t go around them. I tried going over to no avail. I was stuck, and Zoe was paying for it.

  Remember, Lucy, this is your mind. You’re in control.

  Those words were familiar because Zoe had said them to me over and over. Had I believed them once? Was that how I had broken out of the glass box?

  What if the water is air—remember?

  “You don’t think I’ve been trying that?” I wanted the voice to stop. It seemed to mock me now. “Don’t you think I’ve tried everything?”

  Stop trying, the tiny voice hummed. Just be.

  Now the voice was crazy. Frustration and terror in equal amounts yanked at my chest.

  What if the water is air? The voice rushed through my gathered emotions, unfazed by the way it was making me feel.

  I took deep breaths, tried to control the welling of tears threatening to engulf me. I stood, looking at the wall of doors. Thick, solid, locked doors. I could hear Zoe’s cries, feel her pain in my bones, Dr. Loveless’s voice always directing and eating away at my brain.

  What if the water is air? The small voice, relentless.

  I exhaled, stepped forward, and placed both my hands on the nearest door. I closed my eyes and tried to picture it as malleable. Something other than what I knew it was. I stood, whole seconds passing. Let it be an archway, a tunnel, a cloud, anything I could pass through.

  I opened my eyes. It was a door. I swore. The stillness around me popped like a balloon, with the thunderous sounds of my past rushing over me in waves. I dropped my forehead against the wooden surface and cupped my palms over my ears to wait it out. The sounds always washed away nearly as quickly as they came. As soon as they passed, the reminder of what was being done to Zoe reentered.

  “Please,” I cried out to whoever was listening. “God, please leave her alone. I can’t get through. I can’t!” The tears I was holding back
pushed through and found paths down my cheeks.

  Open the doors, Number Nine.

  I lifted my head off the door, anger my only sensation. I yanked with all my might at the knob, kicked and pummeled the door with my feet. Pounded with balled fists, screamed my lungs out, then returned to the place I had started, with my forehead resting against the surface, crying through my hopelessness.

  Stop trying, just be. The small voice was back.

  “I don’t know what that means,” I whispered.

  Nothing responded. I pulled my face from the door and sniffed back my despair. Again I placed my hands on the surface and closed my eyes. I tried to imagine it different from what it was. I tried to tell myself that I was in control, that this was my mind. I took several deep breaths as I began to gain control of my emotions. Just be, I thought.

  The room started to quiet, and the moment what was happening outside faded, the noise of the past came rushing back. I flinched to react as always but stopped myself. Just be. So I let it wash over me without resistance.

  The weight of it felt as though it were pushing me backward, like a strong wind nearly knocking me off my feet. It hurt, the volume of the sound, shaking my deepest insides, threatening to crumple me. But still I let it all come. Every sound, every moment.

  The small voice returned, louder and closer. Just be. Remember, Lucy, this is your mind.

  Then it all went silent. I heard only the sound of my breath, my heart, my pulse. Calm and comforting. I opened my eyes, and the black room with its impenetrable wall was gone.

  Now it was all white everywhere I looked, and the only other thing present was a little girl. Not the one with the unicorn T-shirt, but a little girl I knew.

  It was me. Standing a few feet in front of me, dressed in a simple blue uniform. Staring at me. I tilted my head to the left and she mimicked my movement, then right, and she followed. I raised my right hand, and like a mirror she did the same. Then the left hand.

  She winked at me and giggled, and I chuckled back. She stepped across the space that separated us, and I couldn’t help but smile. I was gazing down at her, now just inches from her, when without warning she drove her hand into my gut.