I could have been trapped. That thought sends a shiver racing up from my toes. It competes with my convulsions to see which can blur my vision more. Marcus is saying something, but all I hear is noise, as if he’s shouting down a long tunnel.
Besides, I couldn’t respond if I wanted to.
Suddenly, I’m flying off the floor, into the air, and through the door of Marcus’s office. My fingers and toes are curled painfully tight, along with the rest of my body. I’m so locked up, I don’t get what’s happening or where we’re going until I hear Kamali gasp. I force my eyes open: Marcus is carrying me like a baby to the bed in Kamali’s room. I flail out of his grasp just as we reach it and tumble into the infinite softness of the ascender-tech material. The blanket shifts around me, trying to shimmy up my shaking form. The sickness of the fugue wracks my body and makes me curl up again. I close my eyes and try not to think about the embarrassment of being in this state in front of Kamali.
I hear them arguing—their shouts have volume but no shape. The bed is having fits trying to compensate for my tremors. Then the blankets move more forcefully across my body, drawing up to my shoulders. I pry open my eyes, and Kamali’s big brown ones are raking over me. She’s scowling and looks like she wants to kill someone. I don’t think it’s me. At least, I hope not.
Her warm fingertips graze my neck. Between the men of the Cleansed cult beating on me, Marcus choking me, and the fugue crippling me… I’m a mess.
“Oh, God, Eli.” She draws the blanket up tighter to my chin.
I’m relieved to finally be able to hear her liquid-warm voice—maybe the fugue after-effects are starting to calm. I don’t know why sometimes there are tremors and other times not, but I want to explain to Kamali that it will pass. That she doesn’t have to worry. I squint at her, but my jaw is locked up so much, I’m sure anything I say would end up gibberish. My need to talk comes out as an indistinct moan, so I stop.
“Shhh.” She draws her hand across my cheek. It’s warm in the cool air of Marcus’s apartment. “It’s all right. You’re okay now.” Her words are lulling my eyes shut. Then she gently trails her fingers down my eyelids, closing them. “Your turn to sleep,” she whispers. “I’ll keep watch.”
The breathy words push me right over the cliff, and I’m tumbling into unconsciousness.
My body is impossibly heavy.
Even drawing in a breath feels like trying to move a mountain sitting on my chest. A small cloud of panic surges inside me—maybe I’m still in the fugue, in the nothingness, and I can’t get out. The panic rushes air into my lungs and lifts me.
My eyes drag open.
I’m awake. Breath leaks out of me, but I temper the sound, not wanting to wake Kamali, who is sleeping next to me. She’s curled on her side, facing me. Her black hair spills in waves across the steel-colored pillow, and her eyelashes press down on the shadows beneath her closed eyelids. Her slightly parted lips are chapped, turning the dusky rose two shades more pale, like weathered wood bleaching in the sun. It pains me to see it, to know that she’s been through so much—losing friends, losing her freedom—all because of me.
Her chest rises and falls under the shimmering ascender blanket. Then I realize it’s moving a little too fast.
“You’re not asleep,” I whisper, restraining a smile.
Her lips curve, then her eyes open. “I didn’t want to startle you.”
I let loose my smile to match hers. “I’m not sure anything can startle me anymore.” Although in the category of Things I Never Expected To Happen, waking up next to Kamali in bed is certainly at the top of the list.
Her smile quickly falls away, replaced by a scowl. She unburies a hand from the covers, and her warm fingertips graze my neck. I have no idea what she’s doing, but there’s no way I’m objecting to it, either.
Our faces are so close, we’re exchanging air.
Her scowl grows darker, and her gaze drags up to meet mine. “Marcus hurt you.” Then she bites her lip like she’s holding back from saying more.
The bruises from Marcus’s chokehold must be a lovely shade of black-and-blue by this morning. I shake my head, just a little. “I’m fine,” I say, but it doesn’t seem to reassure her.
She moves away, and I instantly regret not saying something to keep her there. The sheets shimmy around her as she scoots off the bed. I work my way up to sitting, but everything aches—it’s as if every muscle in my body cramped after Marcus’s tech-induced fugue. I try to stretch it out enough that I can sit up without wincing. A second later, Kamali is back on the bed with a tray—it has bread and cheese, some kind of sealed cup with liquid, and a pastry that looks like it came straight from Kamali’s hometown of Paris.
My eyes go wide, but my mouth is already watering. “Where did you get that?”
She sets it down next to me on the bed. “A bot shoved it through the door earlier, while you were still out. I’ve already eaten mine.”
I scoop up the bread, break off a piece, shove it in my mouth, then follow it quickly with two more. I’m ravenous. I’m halfway through the bread and switching to the cheese before I realize Kamali’s just watching me. Silent.
“What’s wrong?” I ask around a mouthful of food.
Suddenly, she’s angry: fists full of sheet, a clenched jaw, and a flare in her eyes that makes them dangerously beautiful.
I swallow what’s in my mouth, but before I can speak, she blurts out, “He’s going to kill us, Eli.”
“What?” I set down the food and reach for her hand. It stays fisted tight. “No, he’s not, I promise. I’ll do whatever he wants, then he’ll let us go. And I’ll get everyone else free, too. He’s a powerful ascender, Kamali. He can make it happen.” But even as the words leave my mouth, I know part of that isn’t true: at the very least, Marcus is going to keep me around to do his bidding, however I fit into his grand scheme of things. And if Marcus can easily free everyone, he could just as easily hold them captive himself. Continuing to do what Marcus wants is the only way to keep everyone safe—and it’s not like I have much in the way of other options.
Kamali pulls away from me and drops her gaze. She kicks the jittering fabric off her legs and folds them up, wrapping her arms around them. She doesn’t say anything or even look at me.
She’s afraid. I know she is. But it’s more than that. “You’re not asking me about what happened,” I say, peering at her.
She slowly untucks her chin. The frown is torturing her pretty face. “You told me not to ask questions. Not about anything important.”
Some of the tension drains from my shoulders. I smile a little. “The drugs are gone from my system.” I dip my head. “I can lie to you now. You know, if I need to.”
She fights a smile. It kind of lights me up inside, and I suddenly want her to ask… just so I’ll have a reason to share everything with her. “You can ask me anything you want,” I say, softly.
She unfolds and sits normally, re-crossing her long, dancer legs in a flexible way that I can’t do even when I’m not tied up in post-fugue muscle knots. Then she pierces me with that intense gaze of hers, the one where her soft brown eyes are hardened with determination and seem to peer into all the dark corners of my mind.
“People like us mean nothing to ascenders like Marcus,” she says carefully. “You saw what he did to those men.”
She’s talking about the Cleansed cult. I nod.
“But you’re different.” She purses her lips like she’s still hesitating. Then, she says, “What’s so special about you, Eli? Why does he want you so badly?”
My urge to be honest scurries away and tries to hide in one of those dark corners. I look away and think about where to start. Because she’s stuck here with me, at least for the moment, and she deserves to know why.
“You can’t tell me.” The disappoint weighs down her voice.
I look up. “I don’t want to tell you,” I say with a small smile. “Then you’ll know how messed up I really am.”
&nb
sp; She pulls a face. “I’ve got news for you, Elijah Brighton. Your status as a messed up artist isn’t exactly a secret.”
“Hey!” I protest, but I can’t help smiling. “Yeah, well, I wish it were that simple.” I take a breath for courage. “I’m not entirely human, Kamali.”
She leans back and gives me a skeptical look. “Meaning you’ve been hiding some kick-ass black market biotech inside that calm painterly exterior?”
I let my face go serious. “Meaning I’m the product of an experiment the ascenders did before I was born. I don’t have a father because… well, the ascenders created some kind of tech-DNA and crossed it with my mom’s. I think. I don’t really know all the details.” An understatement, to be sure. “I just know that I’m a hybrid of some kind.”
The skepticism is gone, and her face has gone blank with surprise. “You really mean it. That you’re not human.”
“Not entirely human,” I say a little defensively. “I mean, I’m not like them.” I fling my hand toward the door, meaning the ascenders and all their robotic ilk. Then I reel in my embarrassment and just shake my head. “But yeah. There’s something different about me. And the fugue state is part of it. It’s some kind of…” I stall out. Because I don’t want to say anything like what she believes—that there’s another world out there, an eternal one, where her God lives, along with everyone’s souls. Because I still don’t believe that, and I don’t want things to be any more weird between us than they have to be. Than they already are.
She comes back from the surprise. “The fugue—so that’s the part of you that’s not human. All this time, I thought it was just, I don’t know, some highly creative state you somehow dropped into.”
“Well, it is,” I say, the defensive part rearing up again. “In a way. But I'm not just dipping into my subconscious or whatever. When I’m in the fugue, I’m accessing a different kind of information altogether.” I need to change the subject, quickly, because I don’t want to tell her about all the things I’ve seen in the fugue state. Including her.
She brushes back a curly strand of black hair, and it makes my chest squeeze. Because now that she knows what I am, she’s not likely to let me touch her hair or any other part of her ever again.
“Okay,” she says, serious look in place. “So this fugue thing, that’s what Marcus wants from you. That’s why he’s brought you here.” She waves at me like I’m some kind of weird, inexplicable specimen. “He wants to figure out how the experiment is working.”
“Basically, yes.” I sigh in relief, hoping that will be enough explanation.
“Then you absolutely can’t give it to him, Eli.” She stares hard at me.
I blink. My mouth is hanging open, so I shut it. “I’ve got to—that’s the only way to get everyone back in one piece.” I don’t add that I need to hurry with this because it might already be too late. I don’t know how much damage is being caused by this weird torture the people I love are going through.
Kamali shakes her head. “Marcus is not on our side. Even the ascenders who are supposed to be part of the Resistance aren’t, not really. They’re serving their own agendas. And one of them betrayed us. Marcus could be working with that one, for all we know. If you give him what he wants—”
I push back from her determined gaze and shove myself up from the bed. The sheets resettle into a pool of steel-colored silkiness in my absence. “I am not letting everyone suffer. Not when I can do something about it.”
She frowns and climbs off the bed after me. Then she takes one of my balled up fists in both her hands. I can’t help but relax it. Her palms are warm on my skin.
“I know. I want to save them, too. I can’t even…” Her voice breaks, but she keeps staring at me with those determined eyes. “Trust me, I don’t want anyone to die. I don’t want to die. But we can’t keep living this way. We aren’t meant to be animals in a cage. And if I have to die to move the cause forward, to help humanity break free of this bondage the ascenders are keeping us in… I’m not afraid to. Not anymore.”
I grasp her hand tighter. “I am not letting any of us die.”
“It’s not all dependent on you,” she says. “There are other factions of the Resistance and other rebel ascenders who might be able to rescue everyone, if they’re still alive. I’m sure they’re already working on it. The destruction of the camp can’t have gone unnoticed.” She turns my hand over so my wrist is facing up. Both of our remembrance tattoos are next to each other, her number etched like charcoal on chocolate skin, mine a harsh black against the paleness of mine. She holds them up to my face. “Don’t make everything everyone has worked for, all the sacrifices already made, all the lives already lost, go to waste. Don’t give Marcus what he wants.”
“Kamali.” It’s more of a plea than a word. How can I risk everyone’s lives just to keep Marcus from winning whatever ascender games he’s playing?
“Eli, I’m going to die eventually. It’s going to happen one way or another. I’d rather have it mean something.”
I’m just shaking my head. There’s no way I can do this.
The door to our room winks out of existence, and Marcus strides across the threshold. “I’m glad to see you’ve recovered, Eli.” He comes to a stop a couple feet away. “But I hope you’re not considering what your lovely little second is proposing. Perhaps we should remove her from the situation entirely.”
I step in front of Kamali, putting myself between her and Marcus. “You touch her, and we are done, Marcus.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Your attachment to this girl is adorable. And somewhat unexpected, but nevertheless quite useful. So I assume you’re ready for our next round of investigations? Our interests are still aligned, Eli, just as they’ve always been.”
I wince, not least because it’s true, but mostly because he’s saying it in front of Kamali. “I want her with me this time.”
Marcus frowns. “I don’t think you need the distraction.”
I straighten. “She stays with me at all times. She remains unharmed. And you free my family and friends. Today. Those are my terms.”
He gives me an indulgent look. “I see.” Then he shrugs. “Very well. Like I said, our interests are aligned. And these things are easily done.” He steps aside and holds out his hand for me to leave the room through the open door.
I glance behind me. Kamali’s arms are crossed, and there’s a cold anger on her face. I’m pretty sure it’s directed at me this time. I tip my head to the door for her to go first. She unlocks her arms and strides past me in a fluid motion, her dancer body graceful even when I’m sure she’s cursing me in her head.
But I can’t help that—I’m not going to let her, or anyone else, die because of me.
The sight of Marcus’s holo chair makes my stomach bunch up.
The after-effects of the last two fugues were extreme—they wracked my body worse than any fugue before. I’m not sure if it’s Marcus’s God-mode med patch or the weird grayness that it flung me into. Whatever that non-state was, he had to shake me out of it—and the possibility of getting stuck there sends icy drips of fear trickling through me. For a moment, I wonder if Kamali is right: maybe giving Marcus what he wants isn’t the way to go.
He’s fussing with the med patch while Kamali stays by the door.
I shove down the doubt and give the holo chair a pinched look. “I’ve got an idea—how about we don’t use your brain warping device this time?”
Marcus looks up with raised eyebrows. “You said you had difficulty attaining the state, and this method is certainly effective. But I agree the physical repercussions you experienced are highly inconvenient for our purposes, so I’ve recalibrated the device—they should be less debilitating this time. But please do share if you have an alternate approach.”
His tone makes my stomach curl into even tighter knots. “I’m pretty sure Kamali can help me meditate into it.” I send her an apologetic look for involving her.
Her angry expression step
s up to the intensity level of Complete Loathing.
I sigh, step closer, and reach for her clenched fists, half expecting her to pull away. But she doesn’t. I drop my voice, even though I’m sure Marcus can hear every word. “Please. It will be less painful with your help.”
“Maybe it should be painful,” she says, but it’s not as biting as it could be. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I lean in to whisper. “I’m afraid of getting stuck in the fugue. I need you to pull me out if I’m gone too long.” I ease back to check her reaction.
The anger has been evicted by a frown. “Okay.” It’s cautious, like she thinks I’m up to something. Only I’m not—I just can’t guarantee anyone’s safety if I’m trapped in my own head.
“Thank you.” I squeeze her hands then lead her over to the chair. I sit and she stands opposite me, looking uncertainly at Marcus.
“Before we begin,” he says, “you need to tell me what information you recovered from Thompson. I assume you actually made contact with him?”
Kamali’s head whips back to me, her eyes wide.
I avoid her gaze. She’s going to find out more than I ever wanted in this little session with Marcus. If I focus on how much she loathes me and is horrified by what I can do, I’m not going to get through this. And I have to do this… or there’s no chance Marcus will hold up his end of the bargain.
“He didn’t have much to say.” I’m hoping that will be enough.
Marcus is ignoring Kamali’s incredulous look as well. “Did he know who poisoned him? What he was having at his last meal? Anything useful?”
“Look, he was kind of freaked out,” I say, my voice rising. “He was in this gray room. No doors or windows. And he was pissed. That was about it.”
Marcus studies me, apparently logging that information in his hyper-intelligent artificial brain. “When you made contact with my mother, what environment was she in?” He asks this in a dispassionate way, as if the status of his mother in the afterlife is just another data point in his experiment.
The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2) (Singularity Series) Page 15
