The Death Code

by Lindsay Cummings

  I think of Zephyr, the time I found him lying half-dead on the street. He wanted to die so badly he tried to kill himself. Sketch has killed countless people while under the influence of the Murder Complex. I guess every Patient welcomes their own death at some point, and now, I understand.

  Because I want to die, too.

  The Murder Complex is connected to my brain. Every second I live and breathe, it thrives along with me. Every time my heart beats, I imagine the system sucking the life out of me.

  A leech.

  The Wards are right to call the Initiative that.

  The door swings open behind me, and the Interrogator walks in. He unlocks the cell and glides in, then removes the fork from Sketch’s neck.

  She gasps and drops her head, sucking in gulps. “I was just starting to like it,” she groans, defiant as ever. She lifts her head and gives the Interrogator a glittering smile.

  “Where is the Resistance hiding?” he asks. Sketch does not answer, does not move an inch.

  He slaps her face. She laughs.

  He turns to me, black eyes dark as coal. I wish I had my father’s dagger. I don’t know what they did with it, but I feel naked without the solidity of steel against my thigh.

  “Where is the Resistance hiding?”

  “There is no Resistance,” I say.

  He throws his head back and laughs. “You have your mother’s humor, I see. Where is she hiding?”

  “My mother is not my concern anymore,” I say, and it is the same answer I will always give him, no matter what he does. Because in my heart, she died years ago. If she were still the mother I used to know, she would have come to save me by now.

  She would never have left this building until she watched me escape first, until she knew that I was safe. She would have given herself up before anyone touched me.

  But she didn’t.

  She ran, like a coward. And she’s not coming back.

  “You’ll get nothing from us,” I say. “Never.”

  “We’ll die before we tell you anything,” Sketch adds.

  The Interrogator shrugs. “You’ll probably die,” he says to Sketch. Then he leans up against the bars so he can look right into my eyes. “But you, Meadow Woodson, will never get the luxury of death.”

  He leaves, slamming the door behind him as he goes.

  He thinks he can win. He thinks that, battle after battle, he is peeling away the tough layers that surround me, forcing my answers out of hiding.

  But there is something the Interrogator did not account for.

  In this war, I am the strongest soldier.

  I am my father’s daughter, and I refuse to break.

  CHAPTER 11

  ZEPHYR

  I can’t look at the woman.

  Sparrow.

  Lark’s sister. Because a memory hits me as Rhone and I drag her back to our camp. It was something Meadow said, a long time ago. About her aunt being the one who put Meadow’s name into the system.

  Sparrow is the one who sent me after Meadow.

  Sparrow is the one who tried, time and time again, to get me to kill the girl I love. She passes out by the time we’ve made it back to our camp. Rhone and Dex force me to leave her, say I can come back later, when she’s awake.

  And I will.

  I’m going to get my answers from this woman.

  CHAPTER 12

  MEADOW

  I know how to deal with pain.

  My father taught me how to take it and twist it to my advantage, to fuel off of it the way a soft wind can stoke a fire.

  They took Sketch away, and now, I am the only prisoner here, hanging upside down by my ankles, on some sort of table. The Interrogator asks me a question, and when I do not answer, he touches a scalding hot knife to my bare skin. The room is still freezing, and when he puts the blade to my neck, I see a trail of smoke, hear the sizzle and pop of my cold skin touching hot steel.

  “Where is Patient Zero?” he asks me.

  The same questions, the same answers.

  It takes too much effort to speak. My heart is in my throat, and every swallow is fire.

  “Patient Zero,” he says. “Zephyr James. We know you have information on his whereabouts. Cooperate, tell us, and you’ll live like a queen.”

  Zephyr. He knows their secrets, all of the inner workings of the Murder Complex. As long as he’s out there, the Initiative will search. With what he knows, he could incite a full-scale rebellion.

  I wish he would.

  I imagine him saving me, dropping from the sky in the same way that I did for my mother. Shooting everyone down, pulling me to his chest. The two of us, finding freedom together outside of the Perimeter.

  I push the dream away.

  Sometimes dreams are impossible lies.

  “TELL US!” the Interrogator screams. He whips me across the face with the back of his hand. The sting is so strong that I almost don’t feel it.

  “No,” I groan. “No.” Hanging upside down, I feel small. The Interrogator’s hideous face towers above me. My vision grows spotty and dim.

  “Very well,” he says. “I can do this all day, Miss Woodson.”

  He presses the blade of the knife flat against my forearm, right above my fearless tattoo. The pain is so intense that I start to see the world in green. I pretend the pain is only Koi’s knife. He is scratching the tattoo into my arm, back on the houseboat. We are together and safe. I don’t want to scream. My father would tell me not to. But still, I cry out.

  “Had enough?” the Interrogator asks. “Where is the Resistance?”

  “You’ll never find them!” I say. He presses the knife to my other arm.

  “Where is your mother?”

  “I . . . don’t . . . KNOW!” I scream. “I don’t know anything about anyone!”

  He pulls the knife away. My skin peels back with it, and I want to sob, scream, curl into a ball. Instead, I focus on the wideness of his shoulders, the way that he favors standing with his weight on his heels, how he uses his right hand more than his left.

  The Interrogator stoops to one knee, his face even with mine. I see the dark lines under his eyes, smell his rancid breath. He makes me want to puke.

  He doesn’t see that I’ve gotten one wrist loose, that I’ve twisted and turned and done the tricks my father once showed me. I have to keep him distracted, so I can free my other arm. “Go to hell,” I whisper. I spit in his face.

  He punches me in the nose. Twice. Blood drips from my nostrils, into my eyes, staining my hair. I long for a weapon, for something to thrust through his gut, stop his heart. But I can’t do that. I can only use words.

  “That’s all you’ve got?” I ask, still working on my wrist. He turns his back to me. “You can do better than that, Interrogator!”

  He turns, eyes wide. “Not impressed, Miss Woodson?”

  “Barely.” I force myself to laugh, to act like I am completely unfazed. “I was hitting people harder than you as a toddler.” I close my eyes and take his next hit.

  And the next.

  I keep laughing, channeling the insanity I learned from my mother. If I act out of my mind, they might let up. I laugh through the pain, and I do not stop. I only laugh louder, harder, until I realize that maybe, this insanity is not a ploy. In this moment, it feels alive and real, like a beast inside of me.

  The Interrogator lets out a frustrated growl.

  I smile. He can’t take it anymore.

  He steps closer.

  So close I can imagine how I will kill him.

  I just need him to take one more step.

  “You’re as insane as your mother,” he says. “You’ll live in this cell for the rest of your life, until you rot.”

  “I won’t,” I say. “Someone will come for me. And they’ll make sure I’m the one who gets to slit your throat.”

  He walks right into my trap.

  I smile, as wide as Peri does. Then I reach out, lightning quick, and grab his neck with both hands. I put all of
the strength I have into the twist, and when I hear the snap, I scream for joy.

  The Interrogator’s body drops.

  “You will never win!” I yell, and laugh. I want the others to hear me. I want them to know what I’ve done.

  That I’ve beaten them today. And I will tomorrow, and the next day after that.

  It doesn’t take long. Guards rush into the room, rifles aimed at the ready. Men hold me down. I scream and writhe and try to get away, but it’s no use.

  “She killed him!” one of the soldiers says. A young boy, too young to be working for them, maybe only a few years older than Peri.

  “I’ll kill you, too,” I hiss, and I know that with all of the blood in my body now gathered in my head, I must look wild.

  Red as fire.

  “Get him out!” a guard barks. “And page the doctor. It’s time!”

  They drag the Interrogator’s body from the room. There is a rush of movement, footsteps and voices, as more soldiers flood the cell.

  “Move over!” a woman shouts. More footsteps, the clacking of heels on hard ground. A woman shoves her way between the guards. Her red hair is tied neatly back in a bun at the nape of her neck. She wears white nurse scrubs, and her blue eyes are locked on to mine.

  “Miss Woodson, I’m Doctor Wane,” she says.

  “Go to hell,” I whisper.

  “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, my dear.” She kneels down to my level. It’s then that I notice the shine of a syringe in her hand.

  There is nothing I can do to escape it.

  She moves too fast, and the needle is in my neck.

  A pinch of pain, and suddenly the world starts spinning.

  In a matter of seconds, I leave everything behind.

  CHAPTER 13

  ZEPHYR

  Sparrow wakes up hours later, when the sun is close to setting.

  I sit with my back up against the wall, watching. Staring at the horrible scars on her face. I shiver, even though it’s hot as hell in here.

  I don’t trust this woman.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  Sparrow sits up. Even in the light of a single lantern, I can see her gray eyes. It’s like staring at Meadow, or Lark, and I bounce between feeling a surge of hope, of warmth, to a horrible, deadly cold.

  “I told you who I am,” Sparrow says. She sounds too familiar. “The real question is who are you?”

  I open my mouth to speak, but she raises a hand. “Oh, I already know, Patient Zero. I’d recognize that Catalogue Number anywhere. I rigged your name to Meadow’s in the system. Several times, after my monster of a sister kept removing it.”

  If it were Lark speaking to me, I’d sense the anger in her voice. But Sparrow is different. Instead of a fierceness that borders on insanity, it’s like she’s lost all hope.

  She’s a dry husk of a human, inside and out.

  “I should kill you right now,” I whisper. “You ruined my life. Do you know how hard it is to love a girl, when all you want to do is murder her?”

  She sighs, runs a hand over her scar. “I didn’t ruin your life, Patient Zero. My sister did. I was simply trying to find a way to reverse what she’d done.”

  “By continuing the killing,” I say.

  I clench my fists. I breathe through my nostrils, in, out, in, out, to get ahold of the rising anger.

  Sparrow shakes her head. “It was the only way,” she whispers. She leans her head back against the wall, closes her one eye. “I remember Meadow, when she was a baby. She used to squeeze my fingers, you know, the way babies do. Except Meadow was always the kind you had to force to let go. She was strong. She didn’t cry. She grew and she watched things and she was eager to learn.” She swallows, hard. “I used to work for the Initiative, right alongside my sister. She was always the smarter one, always the star. And I wanted to be like her. Until . . .”

  “Until what?” I ask.

  She opens her eye, stares right at me. “Until the day she linked the Murder Complex to Meadow’s brain. She was an infant. Just a baby, and Lark . . . did what she did, and I knew. I knew I’d lost my sister to the science.”

  She coughs into her sleeve, sinks slowly back toward the ground. She looks so small and frail, like a Ward child. She looks like she wants me to believe her.

  But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s not to trust the people in this world.

  “Why should I believe you?” I ask. “How do I know that any of this is the truth?”

  Her eye looks wild for a second, like she’s just seen someone come back from the dead. She takes a deep, shaky breath. “The things I did back then . . . I’ll never be able to run or hide from them. I barely made it out of the Leech building alive. If it weren’t for my training, I wouldn’t have survived.” She points at her scars. “Lark did this to me, when Meadow was just a baby. My own sister, when I tried to tell her that what she was doing was wrong.”

  I can picture it in my head, hear Lark’s cackling laugh, see her swaying on her feet as she chases her sister down.

  “I begged the Gravers to bring me to you. I want to help, Patient Zero. I want to do something good.”

  “Good?” I ask. “What good can come from being Lark Woodson’s sister? What good can come from anything in the Shallows? Meadow is gone. If anything, all you want to do is help so that you can get to her and kill her yourself. End the Murder Complex forever.”

  Sparrow sighs, then shakes her head. “I do want to kill someone,” she says, lowering her head. “But it’s not Meadow. I was wrong about killing her. Sure, it would end the system, but the Initiative would still be in charge. They’d still have their weapons, and their strength. There’s another way, a better way, to solve all of our problems.”

  What’s left of Sparrow’s Catalogue Number wrinkles as she frowns, and for a moment, the lantern flickers. Her burns come to life, like worms squirming across her face. She stares at me, and I stare at her, and the fire in her eye matches the fire in mine.

  “Who do you want to kill?” I ask.

  Before she even speaks, I know the answer.

  “My sister,” Sparrow says. “I want to kill Lark Woodson.”

  CHAPTER 14

  MEADOW

  Waking up is the hardest thing I have ever done.

  I feel like I’m stuck beneath the waves, getting pummeled left and right as they break over the top of my head. I want to breathe, want to break free, but the water keeps pulling me back under. A voice calls out to me from the surface, muddled and far away.

  “How do you feel, Miss Woodson?”

  Someone pries open my eyelids. A light shines, too bright and too close, and I flinch away.

  “She’s responsive. Give her a moment.”

  “We don’t have a moment, Doctor.”

  “She’s under my care, and I’ll be the one conducting business in this operating room.”

  Feet shuffle. Someone takes a deep breath. “The Commander wants her now.”

  The Commander.

  The Initiative.

  It’s a name that strikes fear into my heart, a hammer pounding relentlessly. And then I remember where I am, what just happened to me, why there are bindings across my body and a ceaseless tingling in my limbs.

  I open my eyes and scream.

  I thrash. My head is loose, so I’m able to sit up enough. A nurse tries to settle me back down, but I bite her hand, hard.

  Blood gushes against my teeth and I refuse to let go.

  It’s chaos. Screaming, feet pounding.

  I want to get out.

  I want to break free.

  It takes two people to pry my jaw from the nurse’s hand. I spit blood in their faces, still thrashing like a fish onshore.

  And that’s when I feel it.

  Heaviness, in the back of my head.

  Sort of like there is something latching on to my skull, refusing to let go.

  I freeze, eyes wide. “What did you do to me?”

  Doctor Wane comes
over, her surgical mask hanging from her neck. “Meadow, it’s best not to stress yourself out after such an invasive surgery.”

  “Invasive?” I’m breathing hard, heavy. There’s a beeping behind me somewhere, and it pounds in time with my heart. Loud, louder, so loud I want to scream and shut it out but I can’t move. “What did you do to me?”

  Doctor Wane clicks her tongue. Her eyes are soft. They tell me I can trust her, like windows to her soul.

  Liars.

  “We did what we had to, to salvage the mission of the Murder Complex.” She motions for someone to assist her. “Help her upright. But don’t unbind her.”

  A male nurse scurries over. His eyes widen as he unfastens my neck and presses a button, lifting my bed so that I’m almost upright on my feet, secured by the bindings.

  “I’ll kill you for helping them,” I whisper to him. “You deserve to die.”

  He trips as he stumbles backward, lands on his butt. I laugh like my mother.

  I laugh because I feel insane, and I laugh so hard that soon tears stream down my cheeks.

  Doctor Wane waits until I get ahold of myself.

  “We’ve installed a Regulator into your central nervous system,” she explains. She stands just across from me, a sick smile spreading across her face. “It’s a beautiful thing, really. A way to control you, without threatening the life force of the Murder Complex. We can speak to you at all times, give you orders through the system. . . . Would you like to see it?”

  No.

  I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to look. If I see it, it will mean that this is real.

  But then Doctor Wane turns a mirror toward me, and I catch the reflection of myself in the mirrored wall behind my hospital bed.

  I am staring at a girl who isn’t me. Cannot be me.

  My hair has been cut short, chin-length in the front, buzzed away to nothing in the back. It reveals a small black box that connects to my neck, right at the base of my skull, so seamlessly connected to my skin it is as if the machine is growing right out of me. Thin black wires slither out of the sides of the box, snaking down toward my spine, disappearing beneath a hospital gown.