Nita’s mother had taken her out of school a long time ago. Nita had learned everything from her biology journals. She’d never studied physics.
She wondered if she needed it for college. When she got out of here, she should look that up.
“Good.” Kovit seemed satisfied with her stance. “Now, we’re going to practice the throwing motion.”
Nita blinked. “You just . . . toss, right?”
She demonstrated the motion. Kovit shook his head and tut-tutted. “No, no, it’s all in the hips. You need to have twist. That will increase the torque. Whether you’re punching or throwing or anything, you need that hip swing.”
And so it went. Kovit wouldn’t let her practice throwing the actual knife, because he thought she’d break it if she did it wrong. But eventually, he was satisfied with her swing and posture, and gave her the knife.
Nita took a deep breath.
“Loosen your shoulders. They’re too tight.”
Nita complied, but they tightened right back up again. She ignored them.
Then she threw.
The knife twirled through the air and embedded itself in the glass.
Nita lowered her hands. That was . . . disappointing.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. For the glass to shatter? For the knife to open a hole big enough to crawl through?
Kovit, however, was delighted. He examined the knife, then fished around in his pockets and around the room, but all he had was his shitty cell phone. He looked at it, shrugged, and held it flat against the knife.
“What are you doing?” Nita asked.
“Like a hammer and a nail. We’re going to hammer this knife through, and it’s going to crack the glass.” He gestured at the cell phone. “You can’t hit right against the knife handle. So I’m going to hold this here, and you’re going to punch the phone. The force will then flow through the knife and into the glass.”
“Okay.”
Then they practiced Nita’s punches. Kovit seemed most concerned about how she twisted her hips, and when she twisted her arm during the punch. Flow of energy or something.
When they were ready, Kovit held the phone back up, Nita took a breath and steadied herself. Then she punched.
The phone shattered into a million pieces.
The knife shot all the way through the glass window and into the room beyond.
Thousands of massive cracks radiated from the hole.
Kovit grinned. “Punch again. Right on the hole.”
Nita did so. Two knuckles broke and her arm fractured from the force.
But the glass broke too, more cracks radiating outward. Small pieces chipped off and fell on the ground of their cage. Nita healed her damaged bones and hit again. And again.
And then she punched right through.
Glass rained down on them. Kovit covered his head and closed his eyes, but the force of her punch took Nita right through the window and out of the cage. She landed on a bed of glass.
She was very glad she had no pain receptors, because there was an awful lot of glass embedded in her body. She kept her eyes squeezed closed and her mouth shut. There was glass everywhere. Blood too—she could feel the tickle as it ran over the small hairs on her arms.
“Nita!” Kovit’s voice was close. There was a crunch of glass nearby. “Are you all right?”
Nita nodded, not wanting her mouth to end up full of glass if she opened it. She felt hands close over her wrists and help her up. She stumbled to her feet, and felt something brushing glass out of her hair. It made clinking sounds when it hit the ground.
Kovit’s voice was gentle. “You can open your eyes now.”
She did so. There was glass and blood all over the room. Pieces large and small, but mostly small. They were also all across her body, soaking her in red.
She looked back at the cage, wall shattered. At the very least, she would never be going into that prison again.
Thirty-Five
KOVIT REALLY WAS weak against pain.
He whimpered when Nita poured disinfectant on his wound, fingers digging into the sides of the table in the dissection room. His hair fell over his forehead in a tousled mess, sticking to his face from all the blood he’d managed to get on there.
Nita wore a set of clean clothes she’d changed into from the other room, because there was too much glass in her old ones, and she was afraid she’d lean over and drop glass into Kovit’s wound while she stitched.
He moaned softly as the needle went in for the first time. His skin resisted the small blade, but she pushed through, even as her hands grew bloody again. She’d just washed them in the sink before she started, but it didn’t take long for them to become grimy.
“I’m surprised. I always thought zannies would be more resistant to pain,” Nita said, trying to start some sort of discussion, anything to distract him.
“How resistant to pain I am is directly proportional to when I last ate pain, and how much.”
Nita paused, needle in hand, and stared at him. “Really?”
His eyes were closed, brow pinched. “Yes.”
Well, that was interesting.
She kept stitching. “Why is that?”
“I don’t know.” His breathing was shallow, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “I’m not a scientist.” He licked his lips. “But . . .”
“Yes?”
“I think it’s related to hunger.” He hesitated. “Do you know what happens when a zannie doesn’t eat pain?”
The needle slid in her hands. “No.”
“Hunger for us . . . it’s not like with other people. We start to hurt. Whatever pain we last inflicted on someone, we start to feel ourselves. First faintly. Then stronger and stronger, and if we still don’t eat, it becomes all consuming, rising in intensity until something, usually the heart, just gives out from shock and stress to the system.”
Nita paused and stared at him, his dark eyebrows pinched in pain, eyelids fluttering so his lashes swept his bloodstained cheeks.
“That’s not a nice way to go,” Nita finally said.
He shrugged and winced. “That’s life.”
Nita realized she was just staring at him and immediately resumed stitching. The needle slid in and out, in and out, and the wound began to look less like a gorefest and more like the disturbing smile of a horror movie doll.
“Will eating pain make you heal faster?”
He snorted. “I wish. No more than having a balanced diet.”
Too bad.
She tied off the sutures with an expert’s precision. Nita had spent her whole life studying bodies, taking them apart and sometimes putting them back together for display or sale. This was the first time she’d ever worked on a living person. She was rather pleased with her handiwork.
She took a swig from the water bottle and then offered it to Kovit. He finished it off and tossed the empty plastic container aside.
Kovit winced as he stood and stumbled to the sink. He splashed some water on his face, and it came back red. Then he looked down at his gore-spattered, cut-up, ruined T-shirt and made his way to the door.
“Let me get a new shirt, and we can go.”
Nita followed him into the other room, worried by the way he seemed to shake as he walked.
He leaned over the laundry basket of clothes, and then turned to raise an eyebrow at her and give her a faint, teasing smile. “I didn’t watch you change.”
She turned away, blushing. “Sorry.”
Her eyes roved around the rest of the room. The security camera feed showing the shattered cage, the small table and chair. She frowned. There was a box on the table, large and made of metal. She would have remembered if something like that had been there before. Her legs moved of their own volition, bringing her closer to it. She hesitated. It was unlocked, but closed.
“Kovit, what’s this?”
He came over, tugging his new, clean T-shirt down over his wound. “Oh, that’s Reyes’ storage box. She usually k
eeps it in the workroom. Jorge and Renzo must have moved it here.”
“Why didn’t you mention it earlier when we were looking for money?”
He shrugged. “Because last I saw, it was locked. And I know what’s in it, and it’s not money.”
Curious, Nita flipped the lid.
Inside was a variety of items, but no cash. There were a stack of papers, a cell phone, the two UV flashlights the guards had used on Zebra-stripes the vampire, black gloves, and a few other assorted things.
Nita picked up the top paper and glanced at lists of names, dates, and descriptions.
“What are these?”
“Lists of customers and potential customers. Everyone who came through here.”
Nita put the papers down and surveyed the rest of the items. “And these?”
“Various things relating to customers and merchandise, I guess. She always kept things she might need in case certain types of customers showed up.” He picked up the gloves. “I think these are in case you have a unicorn. So they can’t make skin-to-skin contact to steal your soul. Not sure.”
Nita hesitated and picked up another piece of paper. “And this?”
Then she stopped.
It was a picture of herself. She stood in front of a sunset, and the sun seemed whole because of the reflection on the water. She remembered the picture—she’d taken it her last day in Vietnam. It had been on her phone.
Her heart rate spiked.
Why would there be a picture from her phone here?
“Ah, that’s one of the pictures Reyes used to ID you after she caught you. She printed a few out because they were too small on her phone screen.”
But Nita wasn’t listening to him. She was flipping through the other photos, all of them from her personal phone. Her breathing was too fast, and her hands were shaking.
“Nita? Are you okay?”
She kept staring at the photos. Had her mother snuck onto her phone and stolen pictures before Nita freed Fabricio? But why? That made no sense. And her mother had better photos of Nita, lots and lots of better ones. Why use these ones?
Hand shaking, Nita pulled out Reyes’ phone. Trembling fingers scrolled through the text message history, looking for phone numbers she recognized. Her hand stopped. There.
Nita’s phone number.
She clicked on it and pulled up the message history.
Here’s the pictures.
And you’re sure she can heal?
Definitely.
“Nita?”
Somehow she was crouched on the floor, hyperventilating, and the phone was on the ground beside her. When had that happened? There was a blank space in her memory, as though her brain had been so overloaded it just glitched and shut down for a moment.
Kovit’s hands were on her shoulders, and he was leaning in, voice concerned. “Nita, what’s wrong?”
“Those pictures . . .”
He frowned. “What about them? They’re probably taken from Facebook.”
No. Those photos were only in one place—Nita’s phone. Which she hadn’t had with her.
It was with Fabricio.
“Kovit.” Nita’s voice was calm, so calm, like there was so much emotion inside her it didn’t know how to manifest itself, so it didn’t even try.
“Yes?”
“Have you ever heard the name Fabricio Tácunan?”
He frowned, eyes distant. “Not Fabricio . . .”
“But Tácunan?”
“Yes.” His head tilted slightly. “Alfredo? Alfonso? Tácunan. Argentinian. He’s a lawyer. He’s a partner at . . . well, I guess technically it’s a legal firm, but in actuality its a business that provides tax havens, money laundering, and stuff for people in the criminal underworld. There’s branches all over the world. The Family I worked for was one of his clients, but I don’t know many details.”
My name’s Fabricio. Fabricio Tácunan.
No.
It couldn’t be.
“Nita?” Kovit’s mouth made the word, but she couldn’t seem to hear him, hear anything except the whirring in her head like an overactive computer fan, and the sound of her own heavy gasping breaths.
Fabricio.
Fabricio had betrayed her.
He’d mentioned employees, hadn’t he? His father’s employees. But Nita’s mother had said he was owned by a wealthy collector in Buenos Aires—but her mother lied. What kind of property had a father with employees?
The kind that wasn’t property.
Fabricio knew about her ability too—he’d seen Nita injure herself, and her mother demand that she heal it. He knew what she was.
Nita had never seen him get on the bus. He could have easily used her cell phone after she left and called for reinforcements. He knew where the apartment was. He could have called someone to come kidnap her. Hell, he could have even doubled back and followed them himself.
It all fit.
She’d been played.
There was a horrible, light feeling in her chest, like her chest cavity had been filled with helium and it was trying to burst through her skin and pop her body like a balloon, leaving shattered bones and chunks of flesh in its wake.
The one moral decision she’d managed to make in her life turned out to be a lie. Fabricio had betrayed Nita, sold her, and destroyed her life.
Nita pressed her fists against her eyes, as if she could shove her memories right out of her mind.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Nita wasn’t moral. She had no rules or lines—she was just easily playable. That was why her mom never brought live ones home. Because Nita was too stupid to realize when she was being played. Nita had botched everything. She’d misinterpreted every cue.
She’d been blaming her mother this whole time. Of course her mother hadn’t sold Nita. Her mother loved Nita. Why had she ever doubted it?
Besides, if Nita’s mother were going to sell Nita on the black market, why wouldn’t she have just done it herself? Why use a middlewoman like Reyes?
The more things clicked together, the more they fell apart, and Nita realized the extent of her folly.
Everything seemed to blur, a muddled mess of memories, changing as she looked at them with different lenses. What other things had Nita misjudged?
She looked up at Kovit, still leaning over her, eyes flicking back and forth across her face as he continued to ask her what was wrong.
She stared back impassively, mind calming as the truth settled around Nita like a scarf. Morals were nothing but things to be manipulated with. They were tools you could use against others, and weapons others could use against you.
She didn’t need them.
Didn’t want them.
Nita quietly rose, pushing aside Kovit’s offer of assistance.
“Nita?”
“We’re leaving now.” Nita’s voice was calm, so calm, like a fire had burned everything else away and there was only the calmness left.
She took a lighter out of the box, where it was wedged between the two flashlights. She flicked it on, and finally, there, she scorched the last of her morals from her soul.
“But we’re going to burn this market to the ground before we go.”
Thirty-Six
OUTSIDE, IT WAS DARK. Not quiet, because the jungle was never quiet. The cicadas’ hum seemed to overwhelm all other noise, like having a generator right next to your ear wherever you went. How did normal people sleep here?
Well, there might not be normal people here, so that wasn’t really a valid question.
Mirella’s voice echoed in her head. This place isn’t a town—I shouldn’t call it that. It’s a shopping mall. And the only people here are the buyers, the sellers, and the products.
Nita checked Reyes’ phone. Nearly three in the morning. Everyone would be sleeping or whoring or gambling or whatever one did in the black market at night. Guards on the docks would be scarce, since most people weren’t stupid enough to try boating in the dark.
She’d considered deleting the
conversation with Fabricio or leaving the phone out of sheer rage, but she kept it. She kept it close, like a scar, a reminder of her own fallibility.
Nita still had her night vision, so she could see the world with a clarity most others couldn’t. That could be an advantage. Though she still wasn’t sure how well she could actually steer in the dark. Or do anything boating related. She hoped Kovit knew how to do that kind of thing.
“How do you want to do this?” Kovit asked. He had his hands in his pockets, faux casual.
Nita flicked the lighter and thought. “We split up. On my signal, we set fire to everything around us. This whole place is made of wood—it should light up pretty easily. Once the fire is good and roaring, we run for the docks.”
Kovit shook his head. “We can’t split up. How will I contact you? How will you signal me?”
Right. Kovit’s phone had been sacrificed in their escape effort. Nita swallowed, then looked up at him. There were other ways she could signal him.
Why was she even considering this? She didn’t want to give him ideas, did she?
When she thought about it, though, she realized she wasn’t scared of Kovit hurting her anymore. Not now, not in the future. She wasn’t sure when the fear had fully disappeared, but it had.
And she wanted this place to burn. A funeral pyre for everything stolen from people like her.
Two big fires in different parts were better than one. One fire might be caught early by someone. Two fires, that was less likely at this time of night.
“I’ll signal you.” Her voice was quiet, decision made. “You’ll feel it.”
His eyes widened in understanding. “You’re too far for me to feel a finger.”
“I know.” She clenched her hand to stop the shaking. “I’ll make sure you feel it.”
Nita turned away before she could see his expression. She didn’t want to know if he did one of those creepy smiles.
Then she asked, “Is there any fuel here? Something to really set the fire going?”
“Yes.” His footsteps crunched as he moved away. “There should be a couple of propane tanks behind the building for the generator. I’ll get them.”
Nita crossed her arms while she waited, and Kovit returned momentarily, dragging two propane tanks, each about as tall as his knee. He winced as he tugged on them, and Nita trotted over and took one from him, dragging it across the rocky ground. She’d almost forgotten about his wound.
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