Code Name Echo

by Autumn Clarke

  Emotion is what gives me strength.

  And if I fall apart now, if I let myself disintegrate into a shadow of my former self, I will lose absolutely everything.

  I can’t let that happen.

  But I don’t have much time before Jamie realizes I’m not dead. I know he has my partner, and I need to figure out who else he has and where. The moment he starts to falter from my poison, I have to be there to take advantage of it.

  I’m not going to let August down.

  Moving quickly, I grab a jacket and an ID card from one of the dead guards, then yank on a black cap and pull it low over my head. I sling an assault rifle over my shoulder and search Gallagher Hart’s pockets, finding a flask, a pocketknife, and a cigar case. Trying not to puke, I flip open the pocketknife and cut into his hand, carefully digging out a microchip coated in blood. After what feels like an eternity, I empty the cigar case and secure the microchip inside it.

  And the entire time all I can think is, August needs me.

  At the front entrance of the building, the security gate is no longer manned by guards, but there’s a restricted door off to the side. I swipe the ID card and let myself into a small room lined with monitors, all of which are showing real-time footage from security cameras around the building.

  There’s a lone guard in here, who takes one look at my stolen jacket and reaches for his weapon. He’s dead before he hits the ground. Another time this would be affecting me, making me want to scream, but the only things I can see right now are August’s helpless eyes, and the ten children in the shipping container, and the expression on Jamison Hart’s face when he tried to kill me.

  I scan the monitors as fast as I can, searching for any sign of Executive operatives. At least half the screens are showing children lying in hospital beds, connected to tubes and wires and machines. I swallow hard, my fingers clenching into white-knuckled fists, but I can’t do anything about it right now. If I let myself be captured again, Jamie will kill all of us for sure, and then there won’t be anyone left to stop the shipments.

  I finally manage to locate Alpha on one of the screens. He’s being dragged out to the dock at the back of the building, along with Romeo and Uncle, who are also disguised as security guards. All three operatives have been blindfolded and restrained with plastic zip-ties. August, though, can still see me with his X-ray vision. He’s been able to see what I’ve been doing this entire time. His face is turned toward me, and he knows that I’m watching him in here. He can see that I’m determined to do this.

  But then he gives a small shake of his head.

  Someone’s coming.

  I swing around and fire at the doorway, just as two security guards start to enter. They crumple to the floor, and then I’m stepping over their bodies and heading for the back of the building. It feels as if the world is moving in slow motion around me, the same way it did when Mellie Hart started to pull the trigger in the penthouse, but this time I’m the one who’s killing people. Not with my poisoned lips, but with the assault rifle in my hands. Even when a guard manages to shoot me in the chest, all I do is stumble back a few steps, my ribs bruising underneath my bulletproof corset, before taking him out without hesitation. The overriding thought in my mind is saving those who need to be saved. This is who I am right now. This is who I have to be, at least until I get off this island.

  And Jamison Hart will be dead in approximately five minutes.

  When I finally reach the back of the building, Alpha, Romeo, and Uncle are all kneeling at the end of the dock. There are only a couple of security guards out here, but I duck behind the empty shipping container, trying not to scream or do anything that’ll give away my position.

  Because Jamison Hart is pointing his stepmother’s revolver at August’s head, ready to fire.

  “Why are you here?” Jamie demands. “Did the Executive send you to kill me because Eliza failed? Is that it?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” August says steadily.

  It’s a stalling technique intended to give me time to figure out what to do next. I was going to wait until Jamie died from my poison, but I can see now that he’s already losing patience, on the verge of pulling the trigger within the next few seconds.

  My pulse jolting with adrenaline, I step out from behind the shipping container and fire the assault rifle, taking out the security guards before they realize what’s happening. Jamie whirls around to look at me, but the revolver remains trained on August.

  I swear, if he shoots my partner, I will fire every bullet I have into his body.

  “Eliza?” says Jamie, his lips curled into an incredulous snarl. “I already killed you. You should be dead.”

  “You’ll have to try harder than that,” I say harshly, trying to keep his focus on me. “I’m an aberrant, Jamie. I can do things you’ll only ever be able to dream about in that sad little head of yours.”

  He stares at me with glittering eyes. “You’re immune to poison.”

  “Among other things.” I tense my finger on the trigger. “What did you want, Jamie? What aberration did you crave so badly that you had to do all this?”

  The answer doesn’t come immediately. It looks as if Jamie is struggling to find the words, but in reality it’s becoming difficult for him to breathe. The poison from my lips is reaching its final stages, spreading throughout his entire body to take maximum effect.

  “To be able to breathe underwater,” he gasps. “To save my mother...”

  I almost feel bad for him. Almost. “I’m guessing you’d like to be able to breathe at all right now,” I say, drawing closer to him. He’s too busy clutching at his collar to notice. “You should know that I didn’t fail my mission to kill you.”

  “Your lips.” He has to force out the words. “It wasn’t an electric current, was it?”

  “No, Jamie,” I say gently. “It was poison.”

  And then my target drops to his knees, convulsing and shuddering, the revolver falling from his hands. I don’t lean down to retrieve it. I don’t need to. These are his last moments, and he won’t be alive for much longer. After a few seconds, I reach down and check his pulse to find nothing there at all. I’d thought my poisoned lips wouldn’t ever be the key to saving the world, but today they are. Because I did it. I actually did it.

  I killed Jamison Hart.

  twenty-eight

  Still feeling as if I’m moving too slowly for how fast my heart is beating, I step around Jamison Hart’s body and kneel down before August. Even though he can see through the blindfold, I find myself reaching out and placing my hands on either side of his face, sliding it from his eyes anyway. I need to see him. I need to know I didn’t imagine the look on his face when the guards led him away from me.

  When the blindfold is gone, August is gazing steadily at me. Normally he would be impassive as usual, especially given that we’re in the midst of danger, but he and I have come too close to death for that. His dark eyes are filled with concern and a deeper, unidentifiable emotion reflected in my own.

  He did look at me that way after all.

  My heart pounding, I use the pocketknife to free the other operatives. But as Romeo and Uncle remove their blindfolds, Alpha climbs to his feet and looks out into the darkness, not even glancing at me. I feel a momentary sting at the fact that he isn’t checking to see if I’m okay. Is it too much to ask for a hug from my partner, when I’ve just gone through hell and back to save him?

  But then I realize he’s watching a figure move out from the shadows. From the confused look on his face, it’s someone who shouldn’t be here. Not an employee. Not a security guard. Not even a child. Any of those, at least, would be understandable.

  But instead it’s Juliet, carrying a shotgun in her bare hands.

  She’s still wearing her swanlike wedding gown, but the fabric has been partially ripped and looks like it’s had either blood, or maybe red wine, spilled onto it. Her eyes are unfocused, her gait stumbling and erratic. She’
s more intoxicated than I’ve ever seen her. I’m not exactly surprised that she’s been drinking, given that she loved Damien Fabre and struggled with the mission to kill him, only to watch him die in front of her anyway.

  But her hands are no longer covered by gloves. She’s dangerous right now, and not just because she’s armed. The moment she touches anyone, all they’ll be able to think about is her, at the potential cost of their own life.

  “What happened?” Juliet asks, staring at us. “Why is Gallagher dead?”

  There’s absolutely no reason for her to be asking about Jamie’s father, much less on a first-name basis. As far as she’s concerned, Gallagher Hart should have just been another dead body she didn’t recognize. I can see it on her face, the expression that indicates she’s just seen someone she knows die. Her demeanor is carefully neutral, but I know her really freaking well and I can see that her eyes are furious. There’s only one explanation for it.

  My roommate is the mole.

  She’s the operative who’s been working against Mongoose. The unknown traitor Reese warned me about, even if he didn’t know her identity at the time. This is the person I’m not supposed to trust, the operative who’s been telling the Hart family all about me. She’s seconds away from unleashing her rage, and I don’t know if it’s going to be a spray of bullets or something else.

  But Juliet knows me just as well. We’ve been roommates ever since we were children, and she can see the truth on my face just as clearly as I can see it on hers.

  She knows that I know she’s the mole.

  I manage to point the assault rifle at Juliet just in time. She’s already raising the shotgun, taking aim at my chest. I can sense August shifting on the dock next to me, his muscles tensing, ready to take a bullet for me if necessary. But I’m not going to let it get to that point, even if I have to take the bullet myself.

  “Don’t even pretend you’re going to pull the trigger,” I say to my roommate.

  “Are you sure about that?” Juliet spits out at me. “You ruined everything, Echo. I tried so hard to make sure nothing went wrong. But you just had to kill Gallagher, didn’t you? I knew you would do something to ruin it.”

  “What exactly did I ruin?” I ask. “Other than Ophidian’s ability to harm children—”

  “You don’t understand!” she says furiously. “I couldn’t let Mongoose shut down Ophidian. Damien and I were going to run away together, and Gallagher was researching a way to remove aberrations. He said I could be a test subject, as long as I did whatever he wanted... But then Kieran found out...”

  Juliet bursts into tears, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. I’d seen how working for the Executive was destroying her, how it must have been killing her not to be able to touch anyone without them wanting something else from her. I can see what lured her to working for Gallagher Hart, obviously. Even now, part of me desperately wants to know what it’s like to be normal, to not have this aberration of mine that’s always prevented me from getting closer to people.

  But not like this. Not at the cost of children’s lives.

  “You killed Kilo,” I say flatly.

  “I had to.” Her face is pale, her lips trembling. “It was the only way. Kieran was going to tell everyone what I was doing. Gallagher had another Query disable the security cameras so I could do it.”

  So that’s how Kilo, a man with incredible strength, was killed. His own partner used her aberration on him so he wouldn’t fight back as she stabbed him in the heart. And then she had to pretend to be ignorant, to suspect the Executive, even while her own hands were covered in blood.

  No wonder she’s been drinking this entire time.

  “Just put down the weapon, okay?” I say, trying to sound calm. “It’s over, Juliet. The Hart family is dead, and we have the manifest. It’s only a matter of time before Ophidian is shut down.”

  “We don’t have to shut it down,” she says desperately. “We could continue the research—”

  “On the children who were treated like animals by Ophidian?” I don’t even have to look at my fellow operatives to know what the answer should be. “Mongoose is never going to let that happen, Juliet. And if you fire that weapon, you won’t have anyone left, not even Fox. So drop it before I shoot you.”

  After a long moment, Juliet complies. I breathe an internal sigh of relief, feeling the adrenaline in my veins begin to ebb away. But as I lower the assault rifle, her face turns ugly and she rushes at me. I duck aside, not actually wanting to shoot her. But I was never her intended target. No, instead she’s headed straight for August, her bare hands reaching out for him.

  I can see exactly what she’s thinking. The moment she latches onto his bare skin—his neck, his hand, his earlobe—he’ll want to be with her intimately, the way he’s never wanted with me. The August I’ve always known, the August who used to flinch whenever anyone touched him, is going to be all over her.

  And it’s going to absolutely wreck me.

  But just before she reaches my partner, Reese takes a step forward to intercept her path. I don’t know if he knows how August reacts to people touching him, or if he just doesn’t want to see me hurt, but he clearly understands the situation and is taking the bullet for one or both of us.

  And so Juliet ends up grabbing his bare throat instead.

  Reese’s pupils dilate instantly and he brings his arms around my roommate, clutching her against him, the same way he clutched me beside the Victor Hugo statue. He’s gazing at her as if discovering love for the first time. Even though he must have known something like this would happen, he must not have expected to be completely unable to resist her aberration.

  And then, before any of us can stop him, Romeo lowers his mouth to Juliet’s lips and kisses her, long and hard, injecting venom into her bloodstream without either of them realizing it. He’s executing a death sentence that he won’t understand until it’s already over. They’re entwined too closely for us to separate the two of them, and it’s too risky to get even within arm’s reach of Juliet. Her other bare hand is ready to latch onto anyone else who gets too close. It’s entirely possible for her to distract and kill us all.

  “We need to go,” Uncle says. “The Vivaldi will send another extraction team for Romeo.” Not waiting a second longer, he dives off the end of the dock and begins to swim through the ocean toward a silhouetted boat in the distance.

  Lights are beginning to flicker on all around the facility, and there’s a helicopter whirring up somewhere nearby, followed by the voices of security guards spilling out onto the island. It won’t be long before we’re discovered at the end of the dock, which means we have to follow Uncle’s lead and escape into the ocean.

  But first I have to retrieve the other copy of the manifest.

  I kneel down beside Jamie’s body with the pocketknife and take a deep, shaky breath. This is the only way to make sure no one can get to those children before we do. But how am I supposed to cut into my target’s hand, the very same one that touched me before?

  “It’s a microchip in his palm,” I say helplessly.

  August seems to understand what I mean. He crouches down and takes the pocketknife from me. “It’s all right. I’ll do it.”

  I instinctively glance away as my partner slices into Jamison Hart’s hand with the pocketknife. Behind us, Romeo and Juliet are still kissing as if it’s the last thing they’ll ever do. And for my roommate, at least, it is. When August turns to me again, I give him the cigar case without saying anything. He stores the microchip with the other one, then tucks the case into his jacket. It’s all we need to save the lives of hundreds of children.

  As the North Star twinkles down above us, August gazes at my throat, where finger-shaped bruises are beginning to darken. But there’s no time for anything else. I give him a brief nod and he nods back, indicating that we’re both okay. And so, as our world begins to change around us, we dive off the edge of the dock and begin the long journey back to shore.

&nb
sp; twenty-nine

  The next few hours are a blur. After swimming back to the patrol boat, August and I board a train headed for a small city in Europe. At least the conductor and other passengers don’t seem to notice how disheveled we look. Uncle is staying on the Vivaldi to deal with Romeo’s extraction, and we’ll meet in a week so he can give us our new fake identities. They’ll need to last us permanently or at least for a long time, because we aren’t ever returning to the Executive. August finally has the manifest, and more than a few security guards have identified me as the blond operative who killed Gallagher Hart.

  We’re never going back.

  But as the train chugs through the countryside, I find that I’m increasingly on edge. The deaths of the security guards I shot in cold blood, the cruel glare of Jamison Hart when he forced me to drink poison, even the sight of Romeo and Juliet fatally kissing on the dock... If anything, time and distance are only making these memories worse, not better. The adrenaline refuses to leave my system, and my knees won’t stop jittering in a constant state of anxiety beneath my dress.

  I can sense that August is at least worried about me, but he isn’t letting anything show. Everything seems to be back to normal between us, and he hasn’t tried to take my hand or anything else involving physical contact. Why should he? I don’t know if we’re even still partners, now that we’re running from the Executive. It’s as if everything has gone full circle. He won’t offer comfort or reassurance, and I’ll act as if I’m fine without it. It’s just another factor that’s making me feel wild and unbalanced, like I’m incapable of calming down. I don’t know what my life consists of anymore, and it’s still difficult for me to accept the truth about Ophidian and the Executive.