by Emily Suvada
The crowd is silent. Ruse looks down at me. His silver-streaked face is expressionless, but I can sense his disappointment, and it’s more crushing than I expected. His only goal has been to protect this city, and now the only way to save it is by allying with our enemies. I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw me out of Entropia right now.
But he won’t. I see the decision click inside him, and my shoulders loosen with relief. He turns to Cole. “Cartaxus took a lot of our best people during flood protocol. I’ll want them at the facility if we come—and I want to bring them home with us if we finish this.”
Cole nods. “Done.”
“We’d need guarantees that our people could always leave,” Ruse says. “We don’t take kindly to being locked away.”
“I’ll see to it myself,” Cole says. “We’ll agree to almost any reasonable request. Cartaxus is desperate.”
Ruse stares at the bodies on the ash-strewn ground of the park for a long time. Finally, he lifts his head and looks around at the crowd. “I’m angry with Cartaxus, just like you are, but this is a new threat—we can’t fix it alone, and we can’t just wait for them to fix it either. I’m going to accept this offer and fly tonight to talk with them. Any volunteers who want to join me are welcome, but I understand if you refuse. Cartaxus is still our enemy, and I can’t ask you to sit down with them.”
“What if they did this?” someone shouts. “What if it’s another attack?”
I stand. “Then they’ll soon regret inviting me into one of their laboratories. I don’t like this any more than you do, but I don’t think we have a choice. Cartaxus says there’s a horde of Lurkers on their way to the city right now, and I’m not going to wait around here for more people to lose their lives like this.”
A murmur ripples through the crowd. Some of them seem unconvinced, but a few look ready to join us.
“We’ll fly tonight,” Ruse says. “If you want to come, be ready here in two hours. There’s no time to waste.”
He sends me one last sharp, disappointed look and then strides back through the crowd, heading for the hallways that lead into the tunnels.
I stand, wiping my bloodied hands on my shirt, watching him leave. I’m glad Ruse accepted Cartaxus’s offer, but we need to be prepared for them to turn on us. If we fix the vaccine, I have no doubt they’ll try to keep it under their control. I’m not even sure they’d let us use it to stop the Lurkers coming for the city. I need Lachlan’s help to fix this code, but that doesn’t mean that I have to risk being locked up in a Cartaxus cell.
If Lachlan is who we need to fix the vaccine, then we should just take him.
I don’t know if Ruse will like the idea of turning this meeting into a heist, but the others will be on my side. Most of the people in this city would be happy for the chance to hurt Cartaxus in any way they can. We’ll fly to Cartaxus as though we’re planning to work together, and then we’ll turn on them. We’ll get our people out. We’ll take Lachlan prisoner. We’ll control this code ourselves, the way it should be.
I start to walk back through the crowd, Cole following close behind me, leaving a chorus of murmurs in my wake. He takes my arm, pulling me close, leaning down to whisper as we walk. “You’re making the right decision.”
“I know,” I say, my mind spinning with plans, with what I’ll need to do. We’ll need help. Our people have weapons, but nothing powerful enough to stage an attack like this. It’ll have to be quiet, though. If Cartaxus thinks we’re planning to turn on them, they’ll call this whole thing off. I can’t let Cole suspect a thing.
We reach the base of the stairwell to the lab, and I start up the stairs, but Cole’s hand is still locked on my arm. His thumb traces a circle across my skin, a hint of doubt in his face. He’s watching me with the searching, calculating gaze of a black-out agent again. I try to force my features into a neutral expression, to quiet the energy buzzing through me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his eyes narrowing for the briefest moment.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I just have a lot to get ready before we leave.”
He searches my face, then nods. “I’ll let Cartaxus know you’re coming.” He steps back, his hand slipping away from my arm.
I turn, striding up the stairs, clutching my hands together to hide the fact that they’re shaking. That felt close—too close.
If Cole knew what I was really planning for when we reach Cartaxus, he’d never let me go.
CHAPTER 10 CATARINA
“WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” LEOBEN ASKS, his hand tight on my arm. We’re in the Cartaxus bunker he and Dax brought me to, standing in the shadows of one of the concrete hallways leading off the cafeteria, but I can still see Entropia’s park in my mind. The scorched rubble, the bullet-riddled walls. I can see the crowd scrambling away from the injured woman and the snarling, blood-soaked man. There’s no way it was a coincidence that I saw two people turn into Lurkers in the exact same way, at almost the exact same time. These attacks have to be orchestrated.
A familiar prickle of unease crawls across my skin—the realization that I’m part of a plan I don’t understand. But that isn’t what’s keeping me silent, my hands trembling.
It’s just hit me that the flash I saw of Entropia was through Jun Bei’s eyes, and she was standing beside Cole.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, doubling over. Images fill my mind of his tired eyes, his curling dark hair, the scars peeking from the collar of his tank top. He told me he wanted us to run away together. He told me he loved me. But now he’s in Entropia by Jun Bei’s side.
I push out a shaking breath, straightening. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s gone to her—Cole and Jun Bei have years of history together. He wasn’t over her when he showed up at the cabin, and I don’t know if he ever will be. Deep down, I don’t even know if I have the right to be angry. Cole doesn’t remember me, so he has no reason to be loyal, and Jun Bei had to suffer through worse than this when she was trapped in the Zarathustra simulation. She had to watch while Cole and I kissed. She was helpless, locked inside me.
Now I’m the one watching helplessly, and it feels like a knife being driven into my chest.
I force my feelings down and draw in a steadying breath. “I think we’re still being played,” I say to Leoben.
“We’re always being played. You get used to it after a while.”
“No, I mean the Lurkers. The Wrath—I think it’s being orchestrated. We just saw someone turn here in the bunker, and then I saw…”
I trail off. I don’t know if I can tell Leoben what I saw. If Cartaxus finds out that I can see through Jun Bei’s eyes, they might want to use me to spy on her. Dax said they’re worried she’ll use the scythe, or that she’ll turn the Panacea into a weapon—so it would make sense to keep an eye on her. But I don’t want to be used as a tool to watch her. I’m sick of being a pawn in other people’s games. If Jun Bei is a threat, I’ll stop her on my own.
Or maybe I just can’t bear the thought of seeing Cole through her eyes again.
“You saw what?” Leoben asks.
“I saw what Ziana was warning us about in her note,” I say quickly. “You and Dax should listen to her—it isn’t a crackpot theory.”
The two Lurker attacks I saw can’t be a coincidence, which means someone is trying to incite panic. Cartaxus’s civilians are blaming the genehackers, and the genehackers will blame Cartaxus. Both sides are being pushed into conflict with each other while someone else is pulling the strings. It’s exactly the kind of twisted thing I’d expect from Lachlan.
“You think someone is manipulating us?” Leoben lifts an eyebrow. “What would anyone have to gain?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “but doesn’t it seem like something Lachlan would do?”
“Lachlan? He’s not behind this. Cartaxus has been keeping him in isolation.”
“Where?” I ask. Lachlan might be in an isolated cell, but I’m guessing it has a camera, which means I can talk to him thr
ough Veritas. “Can you get me his location?”
Leoben narrows his eyes. “What are you gonna do?”
“You don’t have to look so worried. I’m not going to kill him.”
He doesn’t look convinced.
“I just want to ask him what he’s doing with the vaccine.”
“You’re not gonna give up on this until you find him, are you? You really are a pain in the ass.” Leoben’s eyes glaze and a location file pings into my vision. “This is his room. Get in and out quickly and then go and round up the others. I’ll see you all when you get back.”
I reach for his hand before remembering I can’t touch him like this. “Thanks for coming to find me, Lee.”
“Any time, squid,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re still family.”
My chest tightens. I load the location file into my panel, wanting more than anything to be able to hug Leoben before I leave. I focus on Lachlan’s room, and the hallway and cafeteria flicker. The world plunges into darkness, and jumping through the simulation feels like a hook plunging into my chest and yanking me sideways.
I land hard on my feet. The darkness fades into the light, clean lines of a room. I’m in a gleaming modern laboratory complete with genkits and an operating table. The only exit is a steel door with a red light blinking on its handle.
Lachlan is standing across the room, staring at me, his gray eyes unreadable.
The very sight of him is like a blow to the stomach, but I swallow the feeling. I’m not here to break down. I’m here to force him to tell me the truth about what’s happening.
“Catarina,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Of course you weren’t,” I say. “You made it perfectly clear in Entropia that I don’t take up a lot of space in your thoughts.”
“You’re sharing a brain with my daughter,” he says. “I care very much what happens to both of you.”
“Your daughter,” I repeat, my voice threatening to waver. It’s stupid—I know Lachlan doesn’t care about me—I know he just created me to help stabilize Jun Bei. But there’s a difference between knowing it and hearing him say it. I spent my entire existence believing this man was my father—that he cared for me, and loved me, even if he didn’t always show it. How can seeing his indifference to me still take my strength away?
I dig my fingernails into my palm. “I’m here because of the Lurkers. I think the attacks are being triggered, and I think you’re the one doing it.”
He lifts his eyebrows in surprise. “Catarina, I have been locked away for weeks now. I don’t have access to Cartaxus’s systems—”
“Except Veritas,” I say. “Nobody thought to block that from you, did they? I’m here, talking to you through it, right now. You have Dax convinced that you’re trying to fix the vaccine, but you’re not fooling me. You wouldn’t turn the world upside down to send Jun Bei’s code out and then remove it. There’s something else that you’re hiding from me. Now I’m here, and you’re going to tell me the truth.”
He gives me a flat look. “Are you trying to intimidate me, Catarina? You were a bright girl—dedicated, focused, pleasant to live with—but I don’t think I’d ever classify you as intimidating.”
I take a step closer. “I just want the truth.”
“And I have work to do,” Lachlan says. “You know my offer—it still stands. Bring the others to me, and I’ll take you out of my daughter’s head and give you a body. Jun Bei refuses to wipe you even though she thinks you’re gone, and the implant keeping you apart is breaking down, so I don’t see a better alternative. But first, I need to fix the vaccine.”
I shake my head. “I know you’re hiding something.”
But he doesn’t respond. He turns back to the genkit on the wall, ignoring me like he used to do when he was working at the cabin. Not talking to me. Not even looking at me. Fury spikes through me.
He doesn’t think I can be intimidating. It’s time to prove him wrong.
I look around the lab, running a scan. There has to be some way to frighten Lachlan—to force him to tell me the truth. My eyes land on the genkits, but they’re firewalled. The only interface I can access here is the lighting circuit. It has a user manual that I drag across my vision, skimming through its pages—diagrams, maintenance instructions, warnings about cleaning cycles.…
I glance up at the ceiling. A cleaning cycle. That could work.
Like most Cartaxus labs, this room is lit with fluorescents, but there are also black strips laid in rows across the ceiling. Decontamination bulbs. This is a wet room—a lab for running experiments on virus samples. Scientists need places to work with Hydra—somewhere the air can be completely cleaned in case of a breach. The decontamination bulbs are designed to let out a flash of ultraviolet light to penetrate the samples and burn up the virus particles. It only lasts a second at its strongest setting, but it’s powerful enough to give a person third-degree burns.
I glance up at the lights and back to Lachlan. If I can trigger this room’s cleaning cycle, he’ll be totally exposed. He’ll have to tell me the truth. Switching these lights on is technically torture, but he’s no stranger to that. The lights might hurt me, too, but it’ll be worth it.
“You shouldn’t have ignored me,” I say, running the command to trigger a decontamination cycle. A safeguard trips, detecting our presence in the room, but I send a virus at it, blasting through the security protocols. The lights flicker and start to grow brighter.
Lachlan looks up warily. “What are you doing?”
I swallow, shielding my eyes. The air is already starting to heat up, and I can feel it more keenly than I thought I would. It’s prickling against my skin. “I asked you before—tell me why you want the others. Tell me what’s wrong with the vaccine.”
Lachlan’s eyes widen as he realizes what’s happening. He tries to open the door, but it’s still locked. He yanks at the handle. “Catarina, stop this!”
I step across the room to him. The heat of the lights is already painful. “I’m not going to be your pawn again. You’re going to tell me the truth.”
He stumbles back, shaking his head. His eyes glaze to stop the cycle, but it’s too late. The lights above us are dazzling now, an alarm starting up in the ceiling.
His eyes refocus, wide with panic. The air is scorching now, the lights blinding. “Catarina, stop this—you’ll kill me!”
“Maybe,” I say. “How does it feel to have your life toyed with? To have someone use your pain as a tool?”
He backs into the wall, shrinking away from the lights. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I could only think about Jun Bei—it was all for her.”
“Is that why you’re doing this, too?” I ask, standing over him. The lights are still growing brighter, warming up to their final blast. My skin feels like it’s on fire, but I know this isn’t my skin. This isn’t my body. It’s just a tool that I can use to get the truth from Lachlan. “What are you doing for her now?” I shout. “Are you turning people into monsters?”
“No!” he chokes out, shaking, scrunching his eyes shut. “I’m trying to save her from her own mistakes. I thought her code was strong, but I was wrong. It’s broken, and even if she fixes it, it’ll be too late. The whole world will turn against her after this. The only way to save her is to take it back—to strip her code out of the vaccine and take the blame myself. I can’t do it without the others. This is the only way to fix it.”
I sway, staring at him, a wall of heat crashing down on me, stealing the air from my lungs. Lachlan shudders beneath me, crying out, helpless under the lights. There’s a note in his voice that feels like truth, and I realize that I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted him to be behind this. I wanted a reason to lock him in this room and burn him. A choked breath scorches a line of fire down my throat, and I feel myself swaying. The lights are still growing brighter, and Lachlan’s shoulders are slumping. I’ve already gone too far.
I drag up the circuit’s controls, killing the
cycle, and the lights cut out, a rush of icy air blasting into the room.
The relief is instantaneous. I fall to my knees, dragging in a breath. My throat is raw and aching, the skin on my arms prickling with needlelike stabs of pain. My vision is still a wash of white. I blink, willing my eyes to recover, and turn to Lachlan.
He’s barely conscious, slumped against the wall. His face is swollen, his skin shiny and taut. Parts of it are worse than others—some are just red and raw, but others are burned to a frightening shade of white. I kneel beside him. His chest is rising and falling, and I can see a pulse in the side of his neck, but his injuries are severe. His tech is going to have to work hard to keep him stable.
“I’m not going to be your pawn anymore,” I whisper, coughing. “I’ll bring the others to you. I’ll help you fix this vaccine, but you’re going to keep your end of the deal. I want that body. You might have created me, but I’m my own person now. I’ll bring Ziana and Anna to your lab, but only so that all of us will have a real chance at a future without this virus hanging over us.”
“I—I’ll do the transplant,” he chokes out, his eyes still scrunched shut. “You’re stronger than I remember you being, Catarina.”
“I’ve had to be,” I say, standing. I don’t know how to feel about the fact that he thinks me being strong is burning a room with him inside it, instead of being strong by surviving as long as I have. Maybe hurting people is the only form of communication that he truly understands.
He coughs, wincing. “You’re not going to be able to talk to Ziana without help. You’ll need to convince someone with a body to help you. I have just the person—here.”
Another location file pops into my vision. I look down at Lachlan, at his slack, burned form, then hold my breath, focusing on the file, trying to jump there through Veritas. A hook in my chest yanks me sideways, the lab disappearing, and then I find myself in a small, dusty room.
The light is dim, the sky darkening through the window. A blond-haired girl is kneeling on the floor, oiling a rifle, but she leaps to her feet the moment I appear. She loads the rifle in a blur and swings it at me in a smooth, liquid motion, her eyes narrowing.
