by Emily Suvada
“I can’t do it all the time, and I can’t control it,” I say, cutting him off, “but listen to me—is Leoben okay? I just saw a flash of him, and he looked… Dax, he looked dead.”
A look of pain crosses Dax’s face. It’s so raw and deep that it takes my breath away.
“No,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “No, Dax, please. Tell me he’s with you. Tell me he’s okay.”
“I got an emergency alert from his panel a few minutes ago,” he says. His face is still tight, but his voice is eerily flat. “She took him. I thought the alert was just because she’d blocked his tech. I didn’t think she’d actually hurt him.”
“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t dead.”
But suddenly all I can see is Cole’s face, his veins black against his skin after Jun Bei injected him with toxic nanites and threw him out of a Comox. She’s ruthless, vicious, and cruel. Of course she’d hurt Leoben.
A hole opens up inside my chest.
“I need to go,” Dax says. His eyes are hard and cold. “Did you find Ziana?”
I force myself to breathe. “I can’t come in yet. I think the Viper is the one behind the Wrath and the pigeons. Her name is Agnes—I’m trying to stop her.” My voice breaks. “Maybe he’s still alive, Dax.”
He just shakes his head, his eyes focused on a point in the distance. “This mission is over. Keep the subjects near you. I’ve already sent a retrieval team—”
“Dax, listen!” I plead, but it’s too late. He blinks out of my vision, and he’s gone. I clutch my hands over my mouth, holding back a sob.
It can’t be true. Jun Bei can’t have killed him. Leoben must be okay. The cabin’s front door slams, and I spin around as Cole jogs out onto the porch. His eyes lock on mine, taking in my shaking shoulders, my tearstained cheeks.
“Catarina?” he calls, stepping out into the grass. “What’s happening?”
I open my mouth, not knowing what to say, how to explain it. If I tell him what I saw through Jun Bei’s eyes, I’ll have to tell him about her, and about Dax and the deal I made, and he’ll never trust me again. I’ll lose him forever this time.
But this isn’t a secret I can keep. Leoben is his brother. If he’s really dead, Cole needs to know.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say.
Anna pushes through the door behind Cole, her rifle in her hands. “What the hell is going on?”
“I think Leoben’s hurt,” I say, my voice shaking. “I don’t know how badly—he looked unconscious. I think there’s a chance he’s dead.”
Cole’s face pales. He stops in the grass, staring at me.
“What do you mean—he looked unconscious?” Anna crosses the porch and steps into the grass, the rifle tight in her hands.
“I can explain,” I say, “but first we need to go—now. You have to trust me.”
Anna’s eyes narrow. “Who were you just talking to?”
I drag my hand through my hair. “I’ll explain everything. We need to load Ziana into the jeep, and then we need to run—”
But it’s already too late.
A thumping starts up in the distance, and my stomach drops. It’s a sound I’ve come to know so well over the last few months. A low roar, growing closer. A Comox heading toward the valley.
The team of soldiers Dax sent to bring us in is already here.
CHAPTER 27 JUN BEI
MATO TILTS HIS HEAD BACK and blows out a long, slow breath. The fluorescent light above us flickers, painting glowing streaks across the black glass of his coding mask. A blast sounds in the distance, echoing down the hallway. Cartaxus’s soldiers will breach the entrances to Novak’s base soon.
We need to get out of here, but there’s no point in running until the tracker inside Mato is removed.
“My eye,” he repeats, staring at the ceiling.
“It looks like it’s just behind your cornea. I’m sorry,” I say. Cartaxus must have drugged him and implanted it while they had him prisoner. He dug one out of his wrist on the way here, and I didn’t think to check for a second one. Now we’ve led Cartaxus straight to Novak’s base.
Mato draws in a shaking breath and holds it until a calmness comes over him. I know how he’s feeling right now. He’s preparing himself. This is the same thing I used to do back in the lab before every experiment, and it’s what I’ve done every time I’ve burned off the patch on my cheek to try regrowing it with my own DNA.
“It’s okay,” he says finally. “I’ll need to eject the mask. I don’t think we can shut it down again without hurting me, but I can lift it enough to give you space to work with. It won’t be comfortable.”
I run my fingers over the array of gleaming surgical instruments on the cart beside me. “I can try to just remove the tracker and leave the eye.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not safe—we don’t have time to be careful, and it won’t be a glass chip like the one in my arm. It could be nanite based, self-replicating. The only way to make sure we remove it all is to take the eye.”
“I agree,” I say, reaching for a tool that looks like a miniature pair of forceps. A rumbling sound starts up in the distance. It sounds like a tank. I look over my shoulder at the hallway, but there’s no sign of Novak or her soldiers. No sign of Cartaxus, either. This base’s defenses aren’t going to hold forever, though.
Mato lies back, gripping the chair’s arms. “Okay, the mask is ejecting. Be careful—it’s still on, so try not to touch the wires. You’re going to have to make this quick.”
The gleaming black mask flickers with light, a row of glyphs appearing on its side. It lets out a squelching sound, shuddering, lifting slowly from his skin. The curved glass tilts upward, pushed away from Mato’s face by dozens of glistening black wires inching out from ports drilled into his forehead. Underneath the mask, his skin is even paler, dusted with a fine white powder. His left eye blinks open, a protective lens over the iris. There are no eyelashes around it—there’s no need for them beneath the mask. The glass rises until it’s angled a few inches above his eye, held in place by a small forest of black wires.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask.
He looks at me, his knuckles white on the chair’s arms. “I’m ready.”
I lift the miniature forceps, flinching as another boom echoes from the loading bay. Footsteps pound down the hallway, but I can’t tell if they’re coming toward us or running away. I tilt the forceps beneath the mask, weaving them between the black wires, and Mato blinks instinctively as the metal touches his eye. His jaw goes tight, but he manages somehow to force his eye back open. I release the tension on the tool’s curved handle until the two clasping edges are an inch apart.
“I’m clipping the optic nerve,” he says, staring hard at the ceiling. His voice is shaking, his skin beaded with sweat. “It’s going, it’s… okay, it’s gone. Take it now—it won’t cause any nerve damage.”
I let out a long, slow breath, forcing my hand to steady, then slide the metal forceps into his ocular cavity and pull.
Mato stiffens, gasping. The forceps clamp tight on either side of his eye as it slides free of its socket. An inch-long trail of optic nerve follows it, a ring of gleaming circuits shining along its length. It drips with silver-tinted blood that spills across Mato’s blinking eyelid.
“It’s out, it’s out,” I say, weaving the eye back through the squirming black wires, dropping it on the metal tray. I glance nervously over my shoulder, but the hallway is still empty. “Are you okay?”
“J-just give me a minute,” he stutters, his eyes clenched shut. His mask flickers, and the wires retract back into his skull, dragging the glass snug against his skin. He covers his face with his hands, his breathing shallow.
“I’m here,” I say, my chest tightening. I’ve seen people hurt so many times that I’m almost immune to it, but somehow the sight of Mato in pain is getting to me. Half of me wants to comfort him, and the other half wants to turn and stride into the hallway, to destroy
Cartaxus for doing this to him. I step to his side and press my hand to his shoulder, not knowing how to touch him. “I’m sorry. It’s over now.”
His breathing slows. “Thank you.” He reaches for my hand, but then sits up suddenly as footsteps echo in the hallway.
Novak pushes through the door, gasping. Dust is caked into her hair, a trail of blood weaving down from her temple. “You need to go,” she says, gasping. “They’re sending destroyers. You have to get out of here and stop this.”
“Destroyers?” I stare at her. “That can’t be right. They can’t blow this place up—what about Leoben?”
“All I know is they’re coming for us,” Novak says. “Did you find the tracker?”
I nod, gesturing to Mato’s eyeball, lying on its side on the tray. Novak strides across the room and grabs it, then shoves it into her pocket. “We’ll send it out in a decoy vehicle. We don’t have a helicopter for you, but you need to go, now, or none of this will have been worth it.”
“What about you?” I ask. “You could take a truck—”
“There aren’t enough trucks for all of us,” she says. “I’m sending people out to camps nearby on foot, but not everyone is going to leave. This place was built to be a fortress, and some people want to stay and defend it. They’ve run from Cartaxus enough times, and now they want to stand and fight.”
“But… they’re bringing destroyers,” I say. This base can’t be strong enough to withstand a bombing. “Staying here means death. Come with us—leave those who want to fight behind.”
Novak shakes her head. “I’ve made the mistake of leaving my people before, and I’m not going to do it again. This is what leading people means, Jun Bei. It’s not always about marching them to victory. Sometimes it’s about standing with them when they fall.”
I blink, staring at her. When I first showed up at the base, I thought Novak was insecure and felt threatened by me and the Panacea. But I was wrong; it wasn’t that at all. If Novak was afraid when she saw me, it was because she knew this was coming. This attack, this war, this impending destruction. She was threatened by the fact that I was taking us into a conflict we had no guarantee of winning.
People die in wars, and so do their leaders. Novak has been getting ready to die ever since I arrived.
“You need to hurry,” she says. “There’s a van waiting in the ruins where you landed. It’s small—you should be able to get away from here without being noticed. This fight is in your hands now, Jun Bei. Stop the Lurkers. Send the code out, and show Cartaxus’s people that we’re not their enemies. Make sure that if we die here, it isn’t for nothing.”
Mato takes my arm. “Come on, let’s go.”
I just stand there, trying to think of how to tell Novak that I’m sorry—for misjudging her, for putting her people in danger, for bringing Cartaxus here. “Thank you” is all I can manage. “I won’t let you down.”
“Good,” she says, giving me a steely smile. “Now run.”
Mato keeps hold of my arm as we race through the base, cutting down concrete hallways and a maze of maintenance stairwells. Pain shoots through my ribs with every step. Whatever early healing my tech has done on the bones, it feels like it’s coming undone. Every injured part of me is aching—my bruises, the small of my back, my cheek—but I grit my teeth and force myself to match Mato’s pace. At first I assume he’s keeping hold of my arm because he thinks I’m too injured to run on my own, and I almost shake his hand off, until I realize he’s using me for balance, not the other way around.
My broken ribs are nothing—he’s just lost an eye. His depth perception is gone. His brain is probably freaking out.
“We’re almost there,” Mato says, tugging me down a metal walkway through a room full of air ducts. A boom echoes behind us. It’s muffled by the compound’s concrete walls, but it sounds closer than they’ve been so far.
“How many soldiers do you think are here?” I ask, my footsteps clanging on the walkway.
“Not many,” Mato says. “They’re better armed and better trained than Novak’s people, though. They’ll take the base, and if they can’t, they’ll use those destroyers to blow it to hell.”
I gasp for air, clutching my side as we run. “But Leoben’s in there.”
“They know that. There’s probably a stealth team inside trying to get him out. Dax won’t risk hurting him.”
Mato’s grip on my arm tightens as we reach a concrete ramp leading to an exit door. We stagger up it, and I grit my teeth, forcing my legs to keep moving. The orange alert from my tech pops back into my vision. I’m low on sleep and calories, and my tech can’t keep going unless I rest soon. Mato rams the exit door with his shoulder and stumbles out. I follow, doubling over, catching my breath.
We’re in the ruins close to where the Comox landed when we first flew in. The morning light is dazzling, the sky a vivid, cloud-streaked blue, the desert air stifling. There’s a hum of activity in the distance—vehicles, troops, a Comox roaring through the sky.…
And there are a dozen soldiers running straight for us, dressed in black Cartaxus gear.
Time seems to slow. The soldiers lift their weapons, and Mato’s mask glows white. His jaw is set, his shoulders tensed, his lips forming a single command. My mind spins back to the guards he killed while getting me out of Cartaxus’s lab.
“Wait!” I shout, but it’s already too late.
His mask grows dim. The soldiers stumble, falling to the ground. Their rifles spill from their hands and bounce across the gravel. I let out a short, horrified gasp as one of their visors hits a rock and retracts, revealing the face of a woman with green-tinted skin and blue hair.
These aren’t Cartaxus troops. They’re genehackers. These are Novak’s soldiers, wearing stolen Cartaxus gear. They were trying to run back into the base.
Mato stares at the genehacker, but no emotion crosses his face. He looks up, scanning the ruins. “The van’s over there.” He points to a gleaming shape next to a crumbling building and takes my arm again, but my feet won’t move. I can’t stop staring at the figures of the soldiers he just killed.
He didn’t hesitate. He doesn’t seem to care. And he used my code to kill them.
“Come on, Jun Bei,” he urges me. “We need to leave now. Novak is fighting this battle to make sure you get out alive. Don’t let it be for nothing.”
I swallow, fighting down a wave of nausea, forcing my eyes away from the fallen soldiers. “Okay,” I say, my voice tight. “Let’s go.”
Mato leads me through the ruins to the van. It’s a beat-up cargo model from a decade ago, its paneling made entirely from solars. I fall into the passenger seat, my head spinning. I thought I’d be able to use the scythe against Cartaxus’s troops if I had to. I thought I’d hardened myself to the idea, that I’d be ready if the time came. But I can’t even handle watching a dozen people die.
“Five hours back to Entropia,” Mato says, starting the engine. He wrenches the wheel, spinning us around. We bounce through the ruins, racing into the desert. My eyes lift to the rearview. A Comox is landing near the ruins, troops swarming around Novak’s base. Plenty of her people are going to die because of me. I just didn’t think that we would be the ones killing them.
“I didn’t know those soldiers were on our side,” Mato says, his hands gripping the wheel. “They were wearing Cartaxus gear—”
“I know,” I say. “I didn’t know either.”
His head snaps to me. “Then why did you try to stop me? We’re at war, Jun Bei. Cartaxus is killing people right now. You’re going to need to get comfortable with killing too.”
“I know,” I say again, rubbing my eyes. “I’ve been planning to deploy the scythe on Cartaxus’s military network if I have to, but now I… I don’t know.”
“It’s the smartest option.”
I drop my hands. “For who? I don’t know anymore, Mato. I don’t know if killing people is the right thing to do.”
“It’s never bothered you be
fore.”
“That’s just it,” I say. “I think killing people is the reason I wiped my memories.”
He turns to stare at me, his missing eye pressed closed beneath the mask. “What are you talking about?”
“The signal tower,” I say. “Back when we were living together. I was running a test on the Panacea, but I screwed up and killed sixty people. That’s when I freaked out and erased my memories. It’s when I almost wiped my entire mind.”
Mato swerves onto a dirt road. “You think that’s why you wiped yourself?”
“It has to be,” I say. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I’ve seen the logs of the code I ran that day, along with a recording of me trying to give my code to Lachlan. I was distraught; I’d gone too far, and I was horrified by what I’d done. I killed sixty people by mistake and couldn’t live with it anymore.
“That wasn’t just a signal tower,” Mato says. He floors the accelerator on the dusty road, though there’s no sign of Cartaxus following us. “You and I found that place together. It was a weapons-testing lab, and the people in it weren’t civilians. They were developing the triphase nanites that Cartaxus used in flood protocol. One of them was a guard you’d hated—someone who’d hurt you and the others back when you were younger.”
I turn to him, ice creeping across my skin. The dirt road joins a highway that swoops down into a rocky valley. “You mean I… I killed them on purpose?”
“Of course you did,” Mato says. “Killing sixty people isn’t a mistake you’d make. I wasn’t there when you did it, but I know you wanted to kill that guard. You probably took out the rest of them to cover your tracks.” His gaze cuts to me, searching my face. “I’ve spent the last three years trying to figure out why you wiped your mind, and I still don’t have an answer. But I know one thing—it certainly wasn’t guilt over killing people.”
Horror prickles through me. He’s telling the truth—I know it somehow, the same way that I know I used to care for Mato. The memory is gone, but the emotions are still there, etched into my mind.
