by Emily Suvada
Mato runs at my side as we bolt through the base, and I force myself to match his pace despite my aching ribs. An orange alert flashes in the corner of my vision as I run. I’m low on calories and pushing my tech too hard. I’ll start to crash if I don’t rest soon. Mato shoves open a steel door, holding it wide for me, letting in a gust of cool air and the sound of crashing water, the echoes of raised voices, and the roar of helicopter blades.
I sigh with relief. We’re going to make it out of here.
I stagger through the door and into a loading bay. The floor is polished concrete striped with yellow paint, a massive steel door on the far wall open to the daylight. A handful of people are gathered there—part of our team from Entropia along with the hackers rescued from Cartaxus’s cells. A few look wounded, others are dazed, and some are hugging one another, crying. The last time these people saw one another was during flood protocol, when Cartaxus’s soldiers stormed the city and dragged them from their homes. They wouldn’t have known their friends and loved ones were still alive, and now we’ve saved them.
I should be happy. I should be moved to see these people reuniting. But instead, all I can think about is the Panacea.
With Leoben’s DNA, I’ll finally be able to finish it.
“Okay, last group!” a woman yells. She’s standing at the open door next to a concrete helipad, holding dozens of steel cables with gleaming clips on their ends. She’s handing them out to the hackers along with black fabric harnesses. “Clip it in, then yank the cable. It’ll pull you up.”
Outside, roaring above the river, is an old-fashioned helicopter flown by Novak’s team. It’s loaded with our people already, and I can see another one flying away in the distance, carrying more of them. The woman hands the cables to a group of hackers, sending them out onto the balcony. “Last chance!” she shouts. “Harnesses on, everyone!”
I jog over to her with Mato and grab a harness from the pile on the floor. My fingers fumble with the buckles as I strap it on and look out across the loading bay. The air blowing off the river is cold and damp. The concrete wall of the dam rises up beside us, impossibly high, casting a long, curving shadow across the rocky walls of the valley. There are only a few people left, and no sign of Leoben.
A chill spreads through me. He must be in the helicopter, or one that’s already left. If he’s not, then this whole mission was a failure, and I’ll have started a war for it.
The woman shouting orders turns to me, handing me a cable, another for Mato. “Where’s Ruse?” she asks. “He came to make sure you got out.”
I take the cable, clipping it into my harness. “They got him. I couldn’t do anything.”
She looks stunned. “Should we wait? Or send people back in?”
I shake my head, exchanging a glance with Mato. “No, we need to leave. The plan continues without him.”
The woman’s brow creases, but if she doubts what I’m saying, it doesn’t show on her face. She clips the last cable into her harness and tugs it, waving up to the helicopter above us. Its rotors roar as it tilts and rises, lifting us from the balcony.
We swing out above the churning water of the river, but I can barely focus through the pain of the harness cinching my broken ribs. The cable holding me retracts, and someone grabs my arm, hauling me inside. When my vision clears, Mato is grinning at me, his hand on my shoulder to steady me.
“We made it,” he says. “Well done, Jun Bei.”
I yank the harness off, coughing, covering my mouth with my hand. My fingers come away stained with blood. “Where’s Leoben?” I push myself to my feet, looking around, spotting him at the back of the helicopter’s cargo hold. Relief floods through me.
I left five coders behind getting Leoben out. A dozen guards died so we could get away. I lost Rhine, and I lost Ruse, but when I finish the Panacea, this will all have been worth it. It has to be.
I walk to the back of the cargo hold to Leoben, clutching my ribs. Blue streaks traced under his warm brown eyes glitter in the light.
“I’m guessing Dax isn’t gonna be meeting me at the other end of this flight,” he says.
“I’m sorry. I needed to convince you to come with us.”
Leoben tilts back his head. “Goddammit, Jun Bei.”
“That’s your greeting after not seeing me for three years? You cried when you saw Catarina, if I remember correctly.”
“She didn’t kidnap me to run experiments on me,” he says. “I’m guessing that’s why I’m here, right?”
“I don’t have a choice,” I say. “You might hold the key I’ve been searching for. I wouldn’t have done this if it weren’t important.”
I shift the hand I’m holding my ribs with slightly, moving it to the tranquilizer gun in my holster. There must be two dozen hackers in the cargo hold, but I know how dangerous an agent like Leoben can be. He could kill us all and take the helicopter back to Cartaxus if he wanted to.
“I don’t want to restrain you, but I will if I have to,” I say. “Are you going to cooperate with me, Lee?”
He stares at me, his eyes flat. “You know, I liked you a lot better when you were Catarina.”
My stomach clenches. I slide the gun out and shoot him in the chest. “Wrong answer.”
CHAPTER 20 CATARINA
I LOCK MY FOCUS ONTO Cole and Anna to follow them as they jump out of the truck. The darkness warps around me, and I land hard on my shoulder, jagged rocks digging into my ribs as I skid across the ground. A cloud of dust rises in the wake of the truck as it barrels away, and my vision swims as the Veritas simulation switches to relying solely on Cole’s and Anna’s ocular tech.
Cole lands with a thud beside me, the duffel bag flying from his hand. His face crumples with pain as he rolls to his side. Anna lands deftly, spinning into a graceful crouch, and stares after the truck with a look of fury. Its taillights recede into the distance, leaving us in the darkness, stranded and alone.
“What the hell, Cole?” Anna spits, wheeling on him. The stampeding horde of Lurkers is just minutes from us now. They’ve quickened their pace, their growls and snarls rising into a roar. Anna shoves Cole hard in the chest as he tries to stand. “Now we’re dead!”
He stumbles back, swaying. He’s still weak from Jun Bei’s nanites rampaging through his cells. “Catarina said she can hide us,” he says. “I believe her.”
Anna throws back her head, groaning. “You are unbelievable.” She drops to her knees beside the duffel bag, cursing under her breath.
“You can do this, right?” Cole asks me.
“Yeah,” I say, hoping I sound more confident than I am. “I just need a minute to prepare.”
I pull up my cuff’s interface, scanning the Lurkers again, and mock up a copy of the signal beaming from their panels. It’s just a shallow copy—it won’t trigger the Wrath, but if I’m right, it’ll hide Cole and Anna from the horde.
“Okay, I’m sending the signal now,” I say, pinging it to Cole and Anna. I let a pulse slip from my cuff to check that it worked. The desert shifts into black and white, the Lurkers’ panels glowing in the distance. Cole’s and Anna’s tech burn white beside me, pulsing now with the same strange signal as the one coming from the horde. I blink back out of my session, looking between them.
Neither seem to be losing their mind. I’ve done what I can to hide them. Hopefully, it works.
“You should be protected now,” I say. “If I’m right, this will mean the Lurkers won’t attack you. You’d still better hide, or you’ll get trampled. Let’s get behind those rocks.”
Cole starts limping away, but Anna doesn’t move. The duffel bag is splayed open on the ground, guns spilling out into the dirt. She’s on her knees, her hands moving in a blur as she bolts together a metal cylinder from dozens of small, curved parts.
I look back at the horde. “Seriously, Anna. I can keep them from noticing us, but I don’t know what will happen if you open fire on them and draw their attention. They might retaliate. We have to hide, not attack. Please
, trust me.”
“Trust you?” she spits, screwing a strut into the side of the cylinder. It looks like she’s building a rocket launcher. “That was my first mistake. I should have shut off my goddamn ocular tech the moment you showed up.”
“Please,” I urge, kneeling down beside her. She glances over her shoulder at the Lurkers, and the wall of dust and flailing bodies grows closer as Veritas updates. I can make out the dirt-smeared faces and limbs. It won’t be long until they’re here. “We’re dead even with rockets. There’s too many of them. You have to hide.”
“You think I’m an idiot?” She locks the last strut into place, then packs the guns back into the duffel bag, scowling. She hauls the launcher onto her shoulder and grabs the duffel bag, straining as she pushes herself to her feet. “I know we have to hide. Jesus, there are thousands of them. I’m just not gonna bet my life on your code.” She staggers toward the rocky outcrop, hurling the duffel bag behind a boulder.
Cole exchanges a glance with me and limps after her. I jog to keep up, blinking as the rocky outcrop morphs in front of me, growing more detailed as Anna’s ocular tech scans it and updates Veritas. There’s a low overhanging ledge with enough room for Cole and Anna to crouch beneath it. The Lurkers shouldn’t be able to see them there through the dust, even without my code running. Anna slings the launcher down in front of the ledge and drops onto her stomach, shimmying back in the dirt until she’s in place. Cole grabs the rocks to bend down, wincing, and shuffles underneath the ledge on his side. I look around for a free space under the ledge and shuffle in beside Cole. Anna squints, aiming the rocket launcher into the distance, and presses a button on its side.
The launcher jolts on the ground, slamming back into the dirt. A sound like a firecracker echoes, and a vapor trail twists through the air as the missile arcs into the distance. It’s heading toward the truck—just a glow of taillights in the darkness now. The vapor trail drops down, a flash of light bursting from the truck, and a boom echoes across the desert. A ball of fire rises, glowing like a beacon in the middle of the dark, empty plain.
“Nice shot,” Cole says. Anna drags the launcher into cover. A plume of smoke twists up from the wreckage of the truck, and the rumble of the Lurkers ratchets into wild, frenzied roars. If there was a risk they’d forget about the truck and search for us, there isn’t much chance of it now.
“Here we go,” Anna says, curling into a ball against the ledge as the horde crashes past us, stampeding through the dirt. They weave between the rocks, some leaping over them, some stumbling and falling, then scrambling back up to join the mass of bodies racing for the burning truck. They’re filthy, ragged, and skinny. Cole tenses, curled tight against the ledge as a few of them glance our way. His hand moves to the rifle at his side, but none of the Lurkers seem to be paying much attention. They’re more interested in the smoking firestorm in the distance.
But it’s not just that. They’re not interested, because to them, we’re not a threat.
“It’s working,” I whisper.
A girl my age races past us, her eyes darting to us briefly as she runs. She makes no move to attack. Another group follows her, their sunken, wild eyes passing over our huddled forms.
“You’re right,” Cole says, hunched against the rocks. He looks at Anna, but she’s just curled into a ball. The stragglers are reaching us now, limping and shuffling behind the throng. We sit silently, watching them pass, until the last of the group has staggered away.
Cole crawls out from beneath the ledge, staring after the horde. He’s obviously still in pain, but there’s a tightness in his face that wasn’t there before. “That code worked, Anna,” he says. “They didn’t attack us.”
“Gee, I hadn’t noticed.” Anna crawls out to kneel beside the rocket launcher and yanks it apart.
“That means someone is doing this to them,” Cole says. His voice is hard with anger. “They’re being turned into monsters and made to fight.”
“It means this is being orchestrated,” I say. “Ziana was right.”
Cole’s eyes snap to me. “What do you mean—Ziana?”
“That’s why I’m here. I don’t know her, but Ziana sent me a message and said she wants to talk to me.”
Cole’s face pales. “She’s… alive?”
“I think so, and she says she knows who’s behind this—the Lurkers, the pigeons, everything. She said it’s all part of the same plan. Someone is trying to cause divisions between the genehackers and Cartaxus. The pigeons are the reason that Cartaxus tried to launch flood protocol, and now the Lurkers are the reason that we’re on the verge of a war. Someone is playing both sides against each other, trying to build conflict.”
“Why would they do that?” Cole asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I want to stop it.”
The moment I say the words, they fall inside me with a weight I don’t expect. I came here to bring Anna and Ziana back to Cartaxus, but now that barely seems important. Helping Lachlan fix the vaccine isn’t going to stop whoever’s doing this. These attacks are an even bigger threat than the virus—they’ve brought us to the brink of a war that could leave the world a smoking wasteland. Whoever did this is organized, they’re smart, and they’re utterly ruthless. I can’t even fathom how many lives they’ve ruined or how many people they’ve killed. I can’t go back to Cartaxus until I know who’s behind this.
“I need your help, though,” I say. “Ziana said she knows who’s doing this and wants me to meet her in person—but I can’t. And she doesn’t have a panel, so I can’t speak to her. You’re the only people she’ll trust enough to talk to. We need to meet up with her and find out what she knows.”
“This is big, Anna,” Cole says. There’s a tense, furious energy rolling from him. “People are being turned into monsters. We can’t let it keep happening.”
Anna shoves the launcher’s pieces into her duffel bag. “I know that. That’s why I’m hunting Jun Bei. If anyone’s behind this, it’s her. She just flew out of Entropia, and now a horde like that shows up?”
“She left because I asked her to,” he says. “This isn’t her.”
“I don’t think it’s her either,” I say. “Jun Bei was… imprisoned until a few weeks ago. She couldn’t have created the pigeons, and I think they were made by the same person who’s controlling the Lurkers.”
“Like Lachlan?” Cole asks.
Anna pauses, her hands gripping the duffel bag. “This is the kind of thing he’d do. You really think he’d try to start a war?”
“I don’t know, but I need to find out,” Cole says.
Anna grits her teeth. “Even if we do this—and I’m not saying we should—you need to get patched up, and we need a vehicle.”
“I’ve already called the jeep,” Cole says. “That’s how I got here.”
“I thought you got here by being thrown out of a Comox by Jun Bei.”
He drags his hand over his face. “Come on, Anna. We have to do this. Let’s go and find Ziana and figure out who turned those people into monsters.”
Anna looks between us, torn. I know she doesn’t trust me. She’s been suspicious of me ever since I arrived, and she was right to be. I’ve been lying to her, trying to lead her into a trap, and her intuition has probably been telling her to get the hell away from me.
But I’m not lying anymore. I don’t care about Dax and his deal. I don’t care about the floating body waiting for me in Lachlan’s lab. For the last few weeks, the thing that worried me most was the thought of Jun Bei using her code to take over the world, but that doesn’t seem like the biggest threat we’re facing anymore. We finally have a chance at peace, a new world, and a future.
I’m not going to let someone tear all that apart.
A whirring sound starts up in the distance, a pair of headlights glowing brighter. The jeep is coming for us, racing through the desert.
Anna turns to stare at it, then tilts her head back, letting out a groan. “Okay, fine. We’ll h
elp you, Agatta. But I’m driving.”
CHAPTER 21 JUN BEI
WE FLY IN DARKNESS, EVERY light inside the helicopter dimmed, following a looping route to avoid being tracked by Cartaxus. Outside, the sky is dotted with stars, the first hints of daylight gilding the peaks of the mountains on the horizon as the sun begins to rise. The hackers we rescued from Cartaxus’s cells are sitting in groups, a low hum of nervousness filling the air. They’re dazed from the rescue, and they’re worried that we aren’t out of danger yet. Some are already talking about what strikes Cartaxus will launch in retaliation. I barely hear them as I pace back and forth along the windows, picking absently at a loose thread in my T-shirt. Simulations based on Leoben’s DNA are spinning in my mind. My heart is kicking against my ribs, pounding to a frantic rhythm.
I know how to finish the Panacea.
“Why do I feel like it’s a bad thing that you look so happy right now?” Leoben asks. He’s leaning back against the wall, plastic handcuffs locked around his wrists.
“Because you’re a pessimist?”
“Only with you, Jun Bei,” he says. “Did you get what you needed from my DNA?”
“Almost.” It’s hard to keep the excitement out of my voice. “There’s a final test I need to run, but I know what I have to do.”
He lifts an eyebrow, his face shadowed in the dim light. “Are you going to tell me what it is?”
My footsteps falter. I don’t want to lie to him, but I can’t tell him the truth, either. He wouldn’t understand, and he won’t trust me to get him through this experiment alive. Part of me is even horrified by what I’m preparing to do once we reach Novak’s base, but that fear is outweighed by the bright, blazing joy of finding the Panacea’s missing link. The last piece of the puzzle. This code has taken years of my life—it’s cost me everything—and now that I can see how to finish it, I won’t let anything stop me.
“I’m not going to hurt you any more than I have to,” I say.
“Oh wow,” Leoben mutters. “I am so, so screwed.”
