by Kyla Stone
Or in this case, her forehead. Willow’s attacker was a middle-aged white woman in her forties, dressed in camouflaged hunting gear. Her straw-blonde hair was cut short above her ears, her glasses skewed, one lens cracked from Willow’s blow.
It didn’t matter. Willow knew better than anyone that women could be just as deadly as men. She dug her knees harder into the woman’s chest. “Hands up!”
“You don’t want to do this,” the woman said.
“I very much do.” Willow kicked the woman’s handgun further away with a jab of her left foot. “You’re going to help me get into this place.”
The sound of heavy footsteps came from behind her. Willow tensed, but didn’t move the gun from the woman’s head.
“Willow? What in the world are you doing?”
“Finn!” Willow exhaled in relief. “Help me, would you? Pick up her gun and aim it at her. Shoot if she moves.”
Finn obeyed. He bent and picked up the gun with his good hand. Once he was aiming at Willow’s attacker, she clambered off the woman and rose to her feet, quickly sweeping the room for any other intruders. “Are you alone?”
“Are you going to kill me?” the woman asked, her lower lip quivering. Blood trickled from her nose.
“Of course not,” Finn said gently. “We aren’t like that. Please just go along with it, and we’ll let you go as soon as we can. We’d never hurt a woman.”
“Finn!” Willow glared at him. Sometimes, he was absolutely worthless. Worse than worthless. “Are you out of your mind?”
Finn shrugged his massive shoulders. “Sorry. She looked scared.”
“This big oaf is terrible at threats.” Willow turned her gun on their prisoner. “He might have qualms about hurting a woman, but I assure you, I don’t.”
The woman raised her arms behind her head. “There’s no need to hurt anyone. We’re pacifists.”
“Right. And I’m a priest.” Willow rolled her eyes. “Show me inside. Take me to someone I can talk to.”
“Freeze!” a male voice outside the building shouted. “Drop your weapons! We have you surrounded! There’s twenty of us to your two. And we have the kid.”
Cold fear shivered through her, icing her veins. She’d been so intent on the woman and berating Finn that she hadn’t even heard them. Some warrior she was. Now they had Benjie. And it was her fault.
She and Finn dropped the guns and raised their hands.
“Don’t you dare hurt my brother!” she cried.
A group of people rushed in—ten through the doorway she’d used, and another ten through one of the open bays at the opposite end of the building, quickly surrounding them. Most of them wore gloves and masks. They all pointed guns at Finn and Willow.
A young guy in a black jacket and a backward baseball cap entered behind the rest, gripping Benjie in front of him with one hand on his shoulder. In his other hand, he held a handgun pointed toward the floor at his side. At least he wasn’t pointing the gun at Benjie. That had to be a good sign.
The woman they’d captured lowered her hands and smirked at Willow. “The tables turn quickly, don’t they?”
Willow huffed her bangs out of her eyes. If that woman wanted an apology, she wouldn’t get it. “For a bunch of pacifists, you sure have a lot of guns.”
“Willow—” Finn warned.
“This is all a misunderstanding,” Willow said, trying again, forcing a smile on her face even though she longed to tackle baseball-cap guy and break his kneecaps for daring to put his hands on her brother. “We’re friendlies.”
The woman spat blood on the floor. She winced as she touched her bloody nose. It looked broken. “You sure don’t act friendly.”
“You snuck up on me!”
“And you’re trespassing on private property!” the woman snapped back.
“Are you all right, Weppler?” Baseball-cap guy asked the woman.
The woman nodded, grimacing.
“We really do come in peace.” Finn shot a warning glance at Willow. “We’d like to talk to your leader. We came with a girl named Raven. She’s just down the hill. She says she knows—”
“Enough,” said a stoop-shouldered older black man in his seventies. “We’ll let the Council figure it out. Take them into custody.”
Someone grabbed her under each arm. She tried to pull away, but they were strong. “Where the heck is Raven?” she asked. Raven popping up and explaining everything would go a long way to diffusing this situation.
“Shadow got scared when the gunshots went off,” Benjie said from behind her, his voice quavering. “He ran into the woods, and Raven followed him.”
Anger surged through her veins. Then guilt punctured her, deflating her anger. Raven wasn’t a coward. If she fled, she had a reason. Besides, it was Willow who’d disobeyed Raven’s instructions. None of this would’ve happened if she’d just sat still and waited like a good girl. Patience had never been one of her virtues.
What had she gotten them into?
7
Amelia
On the other side of the diamondglass wall, Amelia’s father slumped in a metal chair. His hands were free, but his ankles were shackled with electronic cuffs to the chair.
His face was barely recognizable. His eyes were blackened, his face marbled in yellow, green, and purple bruises. His straight, aquiline nose was mangled. His lip was swollen and split. Blood caked his dark, silver-threaded hair. He cradled his right hand in his lap. Several fingers were bent grotesquely, the bones shattered.
Amelia looked away, tears burning her eyes. She thought she would feel rage, hatred, a self-righteous fury. Her father had finally been caught. He would finally pay for his despicable crimes, his years of abuse and cruelty. He had finally met justice. But she felt nothing but numbness and a deep, sucking despair.
“Amelia,” he wheezed.
She took a steadying breath and forced herself to face him. “Father.”
He worked his jaw, wincing at the movement. “You came.”
She didn’t have to ask what they’d done to him. He’d clearly been beaten, tortured. She tried to tell herself that he deserved it. But the words sounded hollow in her own head. Did anyone deserve this?
Her hands shook. She curled them into fists at her side. “I don’t know why. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe this was a mistake—”
“I need your help.” His words slurred through split lips. Three of his teeth were missing. “We can work together. We can still turn this around.”
She pushed a strand of her newly lengthened hair behind her ear. It weighed down her head, caused her neck to ache. “I can’t do that.”
Declan’s damaged face contorted. “You don’t get to say no to me. I’m in this position because of you, because of your treachery!”
The words sliced through her, sharp as razors. She shook her head. “You’re here because of your actions. Not mine.”
“You’re hopeless,” he said in disgust. “Just like your mother.”
“No.” She raised her chin. “I’m not. She sacrificed everything for safety. She traded the well-being of her children. She traded her friends. I won’t do that. I am not her. I don’t make deals with the devil.”
She turned toward the door.
“You may think you hate me, but you don’t,” he said softly. “I saved you from your epilepsy. And I'll save you again. I am your father. I love you.”
“No.” A tremor went through her—so soft she hoped he didn’t notice it. Because even now, after all this, in a terrible, inexplicable way, she still longed for her father to love her. She wanted it to be true. “No.”
She forced her feet to take one step, then two. She moved for the door.
“Don’t go,” he said.
She kept walking. She placed her hand on the door handle.
“I have what you came for.”
The metal was cold beneath her hand. She stilled, hesitating. “What did I come for?”
“It wasn’t just me. Isn’t
that what you want? You want a name.”
Slowly, slowly, her heartbeat roaring in her ears, she turned around.
He croaked out a bitter laugh. “You could never lie to me, girl. I’ve always seen right through you.”
She didn’t rise to his bait. She didn’t let him see her trembling legs, the flutter of her pulse. Her voice was steady, her eyes clear. “Say the name.”
He gave her an ugly, misshapen smile. “But you already know.”
She breathed in, breathed out. Dread coiled in the pit of her stomach. Some part of her knew what her father was about to say, even before he said it. She forced her gaze to meet her father’s. “President Sloane.”
“Yes.”
Amelia exhaled sharply.
His mouth twisted. “The Hydra virus was President Sloane’s idea. She is the mastermind. I was simply her minion. She is the one who orchestrated it all.”
“She arrested you,” Amelia said, fighting the thing she somehow already knew was true. “She was appalled by the recording we sent. I saw her face—”
“Did you really?” Declan cut in. “Are you sure she didn’t already know what was on that clip, so she had time to prepare her reaction?”
“We hacked the feed—”
“Think, girl! Look how perfectly things have turned out for Sloane. She tried to get rid of me on the Grand Voyager to cover her tracks. Until the virus mutated and became contagious—then she was desperate for the cure. Cheng’s syndicate believed I already had it. They took me hostage, locking me up in a backwoods holding cell somewhere in China, intending to torture the formula out of me. Only I didn’t have it yet, so I couldn’t give it to them.
“Once President Morgan died, Sloane was sworn in. With her new presidential powers, she ordered a black ops rescue that violated a dozen international treaties and would’ve caused a political uproar—if the world hadn’t already been falling apart. But she knew what was coming. She knew there would be no repercussions for her actions.
“Now, she’s doing it again. I’ve formulated a vaccine and a cure. She has the formulas and she has you as a back-up. I became expendable. And as soon as she saw an opportunity, she used you and your pathetic resistance to set me up. Don’t you see? In one fell swoop, she gets rid of me—the only person left alive who can expose her—and makes herself the hero by delivering my head on a silver platter, giving the people the justice, vengeance, and catharsis they’ve longed for.”
It all made a terrible, poetic sense. President Sloane allowed the network to be hacked. She allowed the vidfeed to play for every citizen in the Sanctuary. She acted appalled and horrified, immediately ordering Declan’s arrest. Bale had stunned Declan before he could speak in his defense—or accuse her.
Her mind spun. She’d suspected, hadn’t she? Still, she’d desperately wanted it to be false. Maybe she’d even talked herself into not believing it, simply because she didn’t want to.
How badly she’d wanted the Sanctuary to be real, its promise of hope and safety true. But like so many things, the beauty hid the darkness.
Declan shifted in the metal chair, his shackles clanging. “You have a traitor in your midst.”
“No,” she said, her heart pounding right out of her chest.
“Who did you give the recording to?” Declan asked.
Amelia hesitated.
“A guard?” Declan guessed. “Someone the resistance believed was on their side?”
Harper. The mousy, innocuous guard. She had seemed so gentle and shy, her face so innocent. Looks could be deceiving. Amelia should have known better. She did know better.
But she had to trust Harper. She had no choice.
“You’re nothing but an asset to President Sloane. And asset she still wishes to control.”
Amelia said nothing.
“She wants to use you. Now that she has her vaccine, she still needs a way to control the people. If not with fear, then with hope. You represent that hope. If she controls you, then she controls the people. Simple in conception, complex in implementation.” He glanced down at his mangled hand with a grimace. “She has you giving a speech at my execution, doesn’t she?”
Amelia swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“She will; mark my words. She’s going to announce the cure and execute me at the same time, effectively mingling fear and hope in the minds of the people. A potent mix.” He smiled, blood smearing his broken teeth. “I would have done the same thing, given the opportunity. Alas, I underestimated her cunning. Do not do the same, daughter.”
She pressed her nails into her palms until it stung. “I won’t.”
He leaned forward, gazing at her with his sharp, storm-gray eyes. “You have to be smart now. Not like your whimpering mother or your lazy excuse for a brother. You know now who the true enemy is. You know what you have to do.”
Her hand strayed to the charm bracelet beneath her salmon cashmere sweater. She pulled it out, gripping it hard between her fingers. “Whatever I do, it won’t be for you.”
Her father’s gaze softened. “You kept that for a reason.”
“Not for the reason you think,” she said. But she wasn’t sure whether she was lying or speaking the truth.
Hogan opened the prison cell door and stuck his head in. “It’s time to go.”
“You’re my daughter,” her father said. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. Even now, she didn’t know if they were real. “I love you.”
She wanted so desperately to hate him. But she couldn’t.
The love he offered her was twisted, always with strings attached. It was a controlling, conditional, shame-based love. She knew that. She knew it with bone-wrenching clarity.
But a part of her still loved him. No matter what he’d done. A part of her loved him with the pure, unadulterated love of a little girl for her daddy.
She didn’t know how to erase that part of herself.
“I have a gift for you,” he said softly. “It’s located in the top drawer of my desk in my lab office. Sixth floor, suite twenty-two. Whatever you think, I never meant to hurt you.”
Amelia whimpered. She couldn’t hold herself together a second longer. She fled the room before he could see the tears streaking her cheeks.
She slumped against the wall in the narrow hallway, gasping for breath. Her head was thick, her legs weighted with lead.
Hogan offered her his arm, though his expression was stern. “You lied. You didn’t have President Sloane’s permission to come here.”
She leaned against him gratefully, letting him lead her out of the small, dingy prison into the light of day. “Thank you for your kindness,” she said. “I won’t forget it.”
Hogan only grunted. He was all business again, his gaze distant, already drifting to somewhere over her head.
The beauty of the Sanctuary shone all around her. But she saw clearly, now. Shadows were everywhere.
8
Willow
The Settlement was nothing like Willow expected. It was a massive underground bunker: open in the center, a huge cylinder of space dropping hundreds of feet straight down. The place wasn’t dark or dingy. The air smelled relatively fresh. Located along the ceiling were a series of tubular skylights and a massive vent fan, which provided exhaust for stale air.
Each floor was open to the center, rimmed with a plexiglass railing. Willow’s guard forced her to walk along the outside, closest to the plexiglass railing.
She dared a glance down. And down. It was a bottomless black hole. Did it ever end? Willow stepped back swiftly, her head reeling as her guards tightened their grip on her upper arms.
She hadn’t overcome her distaste for heights after all. But did it count if you were hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface? Just thinking about it gave her a headache.
Every few floors, a walkway bridged the interior, traversing the canyon of open space. On every floor, people scurried like ants: workers in uniforms, strolling families, a couple of kids holding ancient-looki
ng print books in their hands, whispering and giggling to each other.
Despite the fact that she was currently being manhandled by two idiots, these people didn’t seem too bad. Maybe they were even good—most of them. Baseball-cap guy was treating Benjie gently, and even the woman holding a gun to Finn’s spine was careful not to jostle his wounded shoulder.
But there was still the troubling fact that these people were holding Willow, Finn, and Benjie prisoner. She knew better than most that even good people could be backed into a corner, do harm when threatened, could kill to protect their own.
Their captors led them through a labyrinth of bland, twisting hallways into a series of small rooms. Willow, Finn, and Benjie were forced through a decompression chamber and antiseptic foam sprayers, which coated their bodies but dried almost instantly.
“Please wear the personal protection gear we’ve provided, including the mask and gloves,” said the guy in his seventies, gesturing with his gun. His skin was deeply weathered, the lines in his face like cracks in cement.
“We have our own gear,” Willow said.
Finn shot her another look, a mix of alarm and chagrin. She was starting to dislike that particular look intensely.
She forced a fake smile, but it came out like a grimace. “I mean, thank you.”
“Wait here,” said a bearded man in his thirties, pushing them into a sterile and utterly dull room. A large mirror glinted on the right wall next to the steel-reinforced door. There was a metal table bolted to the concrete floor with two metal chairs on either side of it. A single light bulb hung from the center of the ceiling, radiating a sickly yellowish glow.
“It’s like an interrogation room from those old police shows.” Finn knocked his knuckles against a hard metal chair before opting to slide down against the wall instead, facing the mirror. Benjie slumped beside him, looking as exhausted as Willow felt. “That’s a two-way mirror. People are probably studying us on the other side.”
