The Death Code

by Lindsay Cummings

  “No,” I whisper. “Get it off of me.”

  “We can’t do that,” Doctor Wane says.

  “Get it off!” I scream. My voice is ragged. I want to kick, fight, scratch out her eyes. “Get this thing out of my body!”

  “Control her,” Doctor Wane says over her shoulder. “The black button, Adams.”

  And suddenly there is pain. A shock, vibrating through my whole body, jutting out from my spine, stretching to my toes and fingertips.

  “Test the connection to the girl,” the doctor says.

  And then . . . impossibly . . .

  I can hear Peri’s voice. Peri’s scream.

  She is sobbing. Calling for Mommy, Daddy, Koi, Meadow. And I can’t reach her, can’t talk back to her, but I know that this is not fabricated. Fear this extreme has to be real. What if it’s a recording? What if they have already killed her?

  “Stop it!” I scream. “Make it stop! Don’t you touch her, don’t you ever touch her!”

  Doctor Wane holds up a hand. “She’s had enough for now,” she says.

  Peri’s screams disappear.

  I’m sweating, tears streaming down my cheeks. My whole body trembles.

  “This Regulator is connected to an identical one, across the country, that is installed in your sister’s body,” Doctor Wane says. “Brings you closer together in a way, yes?”

  “You’re a monster,” I whisper. “I won’t let you get away with this.” I look up at Doctor Wane. There is murder in my eyes, bloodlust seeping from my soul.

  “We’ve already done it, Meadow,” she says, smiling. She reaches out to stroke my hair, her hands lingering on the Regulator. “We’ve broken you,” she whispers. “Now, you will do anything that we ask.”

  CHAPTER 15

  ZEPHYR

  The Night Siren goes off. Rhone and Dex go out to search for Lark.

  They leave me behind, because of my last episode. Instead, they tie me up in chains across from Sparrow.

  We’re prisoners together. The Patient and the Creator’s sister.

  I fall asleep, and in my dreams, I visit Talan.

  It’s early morning.

  Talan is sitting on the shore beside me, dark hair waving in the wind. Her daughter Arden runs in circles behind her, chasing a tiny crab as it paces sideways, claws raised to attack.

  “I like the sunrise,” I say. “It feels like a fresh start.”

  “You’re such a girl.” Talan laughs and sticks her tongue out at me.

  “Real mature,” I say. “I’m being serious.”

  “That’s your problem.” She leans back onto her elbows. “You’re always too serious. Life isn’t about that.”

  A wave rushes up and tickles my toes. “Yeah? What’s it about, then?”

  “Sex,” Talan says, and when I laugh, she waves me off. “Smiling, and laughing, and stealing from people. Putting the first bite of food in your mouth after a hard day of Collection Duty. Curling up next to your daughter at night.”

  “Those are your favorite things,” I say. “Not mine.”

  Talan nudges me. “It’s all the stuff that makes me feel alive, Zeph.” She lets a handful of sand run through her fingers. “Tell me about yours.”

  “I don’t feel alive,” I say.

  “But you are,” Talan growls.

  “Fine.” I watch the waves. I hate the ocean. But I like the world above it. “The sun. The moon. The stars. Things that are far away from here.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Talan says, “that makes me feel alive.”

  “Arden?” I ask. “Does Arden make you feel alive?”

  We both turn to look at her daughter. She’s splashing in the waves, giggling her head off.

  “Yeah.” Talan nods.

  But just as a wave crashes, I see her eyes turn toward me. They look different than normal. They look soft. And I swear I hear her say, “And you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  MEADOW

  I have been a prisoner for days.

  And now, suddenly, I am free.

  I am sitting in a plush red chair inside of a circular room that is adorned in gold. It does not belong in the Shallows. It belongs in a storybook, far away from here.

  Somewhere beautiful and new, without death and lies.

  I look down at my wrists. There are no MagnaCuffs, no guards standing behind my back, tranquilizer rifles aimed at me, ready to take me out the second I make a wrong move.

  Instead, there is a Regulator in my skull and my spine. The threat of my sister’s torture hangs over me, heavy as a storm cloud.

  This is the Commander’s office. The man who runs the Initiative.

  His portrait is across the room, hanging on the wall. Staring down at me, exactly like the one that I saw of my mother just a few short weeks ago. The Commander has jet-black hair oiled to his head. Strong bones, an angular face that is just as sharp and untouchable as I imagine his heart must be.

  “I hate you,” I whisper to the portrait.

  The door behind me slides open, and he walks in.

  “Miss Woodson.” His voice is just as oily as his hair. I do not give him the satisfaction of turning around. I hear his boots clack-clack on the hard floor, and it takes me back to the day I found myself in the secret Initiative building in the Everglades.

  The day I discovered the Murder Complex.

  The day I discovered who my mother really was.

  The Commander moves past my chair, takes a seat across from me on a pristine white couch. He takes a moment to sit and stare. I feel like his eyes can see through me, see everything I want to hide but no longer can.

  Because he holds the key to controlling me now.

  Peri.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks. He laces his hands together and settles them into his lap. He could be an uncle, asking me about my day.

  I want to peel the skin from his face.

  “It’s quite rude to ignore your elder, Miss Woodson,” the Commander says. “I’m afraid we’ll have to work on your manners.”

  He taps a silver bracelet on his wrist.

  The pain comes like lightning in my veins.

  No! Please, no! NO! It’s Peri’s voice again, inside of my head. I imagine her face, her wide gray eyes turned red from tears. From terror and torture and everything she never deserved.

  Daddy! Daddy!

  “Peri!” I scream, but I know she can’t hear me. I slam my hands against my ears, curl into myself. “Make it stop! Make it STOP!”

  “Fascinating,” the Commander says. “All right, that’s enough for now.”

  Meadow! I hear her scream my name just as her voice cuts off.

  The pain fades. But the anger only gets hotter and hotter.

  I am left gasping for air. Holding my arms against my chest like it can keep my heart whole, when in reality, it is crumbling to pieces inside of me.

  My sister.

  My sister.

  “How does it feel?” the Commander asks. He kneels right in front of me, and I want to hurt him so badly. I want to destroy him, see him hung from his ankles, see him turn to ashes in the middle of an inferno.

  But all I can do is sit silent and still.

  If I move, if I do anything at all, Peri will be punished.

  “How does it feel to have something you love under attack? It is exactly what you’ve done to the Initiative. Your Resistance came into my home, my world, and tried to destroy it. Do you see what happens, Miss Woodson, when you hurt something I love?”

  My breath comes out in a low hiss. I meet his eyes, and in mine, I hope he sees the fire. “You’ll burn for what you’re doing to her. She’s just an innocent child. Take me. Take me and hurt me, but leave her out of this.” I do something my father would never do.

  I beg.

  “Please. I’ll do anything. Anything you want. Just take me instead of her.”

  The Commander throws his head back and laughs.

  It echoes off of the round walls, slithers thr
ough my ears.

  “The fearless Lark Woodson’s daughter, begging for mercy from her enemy.” He paces, back and forth, laughing as he goes. “Your sister is much more than a child, Meadow. She’s an asset. A very valuable one, and the Initiative intend to use this new connection to your sister as a way to get you to do our bidding. Anything we ask, you’ll do. Anything we need, and you’ll fall at our feet, begging to help us.”

  I clench my teeth. I grip the chair as hard as I can, force myself not to lunge from my seat and grab his throat. “What do you want from me?”

  He sits back down on the white couch, legs crossed, poised and proper. It cannot hide the madness inside of his soul. “Your mother is quite the inventor,” he says. “This Regulator you have, it was one of hers. An original option, before she and her team discovered the connection we could make with the Murder Complex. But we’ve found uses for her old inventions. The Initiative is sentimental, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Breathe in. Breathe out. My father’s voice. Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t do anything at all.

  “We used to be great friends, your mother and I. But then she turned her back on the Initiative. She decided that she couldn’t handle the pressure of the job. And of course, she lost her mind, the crazy wench.”

  Deep breaths, calm and even. My father’s voice guides me. You can control your anger. Reel it in, and save it for later, when you will need it the most.

  The Commander continues. “She eventually did give in, you know. Gave us the codes, showed us the workings of her system. But there’s a problem, Miss Woodson. Do you know what that problem is?”

  I shake my head. I don’t know, and I don’t care.

  All I want to do is kill him, save my sister, and die, so that no one ever again will be affected by the Murder Complex.

  “Your mother’s system is rebelling.”

  That gets my attention. I look up, and he smiles. “How?” I ask.

  “A virus, of sorts, and quite complex in its coding. Naturally, we have plenty of people on the job, working around the clock to repair it.” He sighs, and for a second I catch the dark circles beneath his eyes. “It came from somewhere inside of the Shallows.”

  “What do you need me for?”

  He licks his lips, then gives me a smile that chills me to my core. “You’re going to find your mother, of course! You’re going to bring her back to us and convince her to retake the system. Repair it, renew it, and run it all over again.”

  “And if I refuse?” I ask. “Or if I bring her in, and she refuses?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Oh, I think you’ll find that convincing you, the both of you, will be quite the fun little game.”

  He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a NoteScreen. He stands, places the device onto my lap, and heads for the door.

  “You’ll leave first thing in the morning,” the Commander says. “A quick tap on the screen should be all the convincing you’ll need.” He shuts the door behind him, and I am alone.

  I stare at my lap.

  The NoteScreen stares back.

  I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to know what horrors will lie on its face the second it comes to life.

  But I reach out and tap the screen.

  It is my nightmare, come true.

  It is my world, crumbling away like ashes or dust.

  It is an image of a wooded area. Trees tower all around, and somewhere in the distance, I think I see a flickering fire. There is movement, near the base of a tree.

  There is a trembling child. Lying against the trunk, curled up in a ragged blanket. The child’s back is to the camera, so I can see all of their hair is shaved away. I gasp as I see the same black device as mine stuck to the back of the child’s neck, and I know.

  It’s her.

  “Peri,” I whisper. I press my face so close to the screen that my breath fogs it up. I wipe it away, and I see Peri roll over onto her side, so that she’s facing the camera. Her face is smudged with dirt. Her bald head is covered in cuts. Her eyes are dim, like fading lights. There is a metal cuff on her wrist, the color of the springtime sea. It shows how thin she is, how small. She trembles, and I see her breath come out in thick fog. She moans, just once, and then she goes still.

  “Peri, hold on. Just hold on,” I hear myself say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll come for you. Daddy will come for you. Koi will help.”

  She’s crying.

  “You’re okay,” I say, wiping tears from my own eyes, and I wish she could hear my voice, know that I’m here, I’m watching, and I’m going to make it all better somehow. “You’re okay. . . . You have to be okay.”

  Suddenly, the image fades, pulling her into darkness. I tap the screen again, but it does not light back up. She’s gone.

  “Peri?” My voice cracks. “No. Come back. Just come back to me.”

  I tap it again, and again, and again, but her image does not return.

  The fury comes from out of nowhere.

  I don’t have control of myself anymore. I stand up and throw the NoteScreen across the room. It shatters against the wall, bursts into a million pieces. I grab the chair I was sitting on and launch it against the door. The sound is deafening, a roar that mirrors the blistering hate inside of my heart. “Let her go! Just let her go!”

  I scream my sister’s name.

  I scream for her brokenness, and for mine.

  I grab a shard of the NoteScreen’s glass, the sharpest, longest one, and aim it toward myself.

  I could end this now. If I die, everything the Initiative has built will die, too. It’s worth it. For the first time in my life, survival is futile. Dying is the key.

  But the second I thrust the shard toward myself, right over my throat, I hear a voice.

  The Commander. I wouldn’t do that, Miss Woodson. If you kill yourself, rest assured that your sister would soon join you in death.

  There’s a jolt of pain.

  Peri screams again.

  I drop the glass. “Get out of my head!”

  I curl into a ball on the middle of the floor. I can feel the pieces of myself tumbling around, breaking into fragments with every second. Soon they will be as tiny and worthless as grains of sand.

  I rock back and forth, whispering her name.

  “I’ll do it!” I scream. “I’ll do whatever you want!”

  That’s a good girl, the Commander says.

  The door of the room slides open. I can’t live for myself, and I can’t die. Everything I do goes back to her, and I will do it. Whatever they ask, I will do it, because Peri is worth the worst deeds in the world.

  Sometimes, we have to give up everything, throw our lives into the line of fire, if it means saving the ones we love.

  CHAPTER 17

  ZEPHYR

  I wake up, drenched in sweat.

  I’m breathing hard and heavy. I feel like I’m going to puke.

  It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory.

  “No,” I say to myself.

  And then I really do puke.

  Because it hits me. All this time I didn’t know. I didn’t know, and now she’s dead, because of me.

  She loved me.

  Talan loved me. And not as just a friend. She loved me as more than that, in her own way, and she didn’t have much love left to give, but she gave it to me.

  How did I not see it? How did I not know?

  The last few days of her life, I just ran off. Left her alone, chased after some girl I barely even knew. Then Talan came, and she gave her life away so I could keep mine.

  And I’m just sitting here, hiding like a ChumHead in the Graveyard, not doing anything to avenge her.

  I puke again, emptying my stomach. Sparrow’s snores cut off, and she wakes up.

  “What happened to you?” she asks.

  Our eyes meet. And that’s when it starts.

  Welcome back to the Murder Complex, Patient Zero.

  Initiate Termination.

  “No,” I gasp. I
look at Sparrow for help, but we’re both in chains. “RUN!”

  “I can’t run,” Sparrow says sadly. “We’d better hope those chains hold.”

  Initiate Termination.

  “Stop it!” I scream, wish I could put my hands to my head and squeeze it hard, but I can’t. I think of Meadow, because she’s the one who helps me fight the system. She’s the one who saves me.

  But then Talan’s face pops up. She’s crying.

  You chose her over me, she says.

  The guilt comes.

  I lose my strength.

  The Murder Complex sucks me under.

  CHAPTER 18

  MEADOW

  Doctor Wane escorts me back to my cell.

  We walk side by side, as if we are old friends, but the entire time, all I can think of is my father, telling me to run. You can fight anything off, Meadow. You can find a way out of any situation. You just have to be resourceful.

  I must ignore his voice now.

  Escape is impossible.

  I swallow hard, imagine my father fading. The sunspots on his face, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. I’m sorry, I think to him. I’ve failed you. He slips from the surface. Sinks deeper and deeper away, locked in the back of my mind. A prisoner, like me.

  “You’ll notice you feel stronger,” Doctor Wane tells me. She pats me on the back. “We replenished your system with nutrients, gave you muscle enhancers. You’re brand new!”

  I look down at my arms. The muscles look ropier. Stronger than before.

  Funny, how opposite it is from how I feel on the inside.

  “Get a good night’s sleep,” Doctor Wane says, when we reach my cell. “First light, you’ll begin the search for your mother.”

  “I’m thrilled,” I say under my breath.

  “You should be, dear!” She grabs my shoulders, whirls me to face her. “After this, you’ll be the Initiative’s darling!”

  She unlocks my cell and ushers me in.

  It is still freezing. Sketch is back, curled into a ball in the corner, trembling the same way Peri was. “I want you to make it warmer in here,” I say, curling my fingers around the bars. “I may not be able to fight you, but I can make this new relationship a pain in your ass. And you’ll need me at my best, should anyone attack me outside. It’s dangerous out there.” I stare hard, refuse to blink.