This is my fault.
When her shoulders are finally still, I bring the napkin away. It is stained red.
I grab the wine glass and hold it to her lips, tipping it slowly. She sips and swallows and makes a face. The alcohol must burn its way down her insides but it’s the only thing I have. Titus didn’t give me any water. When she’s finished, I set the glass aside.
Melanie slowly raises her head and regards me solemnly. For a moment, I feel connected. Just like the moment we shared the night she surrendered. There is a glimpse of tenderness, of lucidity. And I know she is still in there … somewhere. But then her eyes fill with venom and her lip curls.
“You. This is all because of you,” she says in a hoarse whisper that is frightening in its desperation. Her lips are crimson and sticky with blood and her eyes are wide and unfocused. She has never looked more like a monster. And because she is right, I have never felt more like a villain.
I can’t argue, but I’m not sure it would be prudent to agree, not with her lip curled that way and her arms now straining against her bindings. She watches me, waiting for something. “I …”
“Why are you here?” she screams, her voice breaking on the last word as it gives out from the effort.
Before I can think of an answer, she jerks her attention toward the door and then just as quickly to the reflective wall. “Why would you send her in here?” Melanie yells at the mirrored glass. “Why?”
There is no answer.
“I want to see Daniel! Bring me to Daniel!”
I rise to my feet and back up a step, the stained napkin hanging loosely in my hand. I don’t know what else to do or how to fix it. For me, for Titus, or for her.
Melanie strains away from me and the chair creaks. She continues to screech at the wall, “Of all of the people in the world, you send her? I’m not telling her shit!”
Again, there is no answer and I know there won’t be. She must know it too. Finally, she turns back to glare at me, her chest heaving with labored breaths.
“Melanie, I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
Her eyes are still full of unshed tears but they don’t look particularly sad. She is broken, most certainly, but she is also unhinged. There is an emptiness there I cannot reach. Hopelessness. And I know it is too late.
“I failed,” she says dully.
“No, you didn’t. You’re doing great,” I say, hoping Titus will think we’re both referring to her survival and nothing more.
She doesn’t seem to hear me as she goes on, “I failed them all. He knows I had them. It slipped out when he used that thing …” A tear slips down her cheek. “And Daniel. I failed him too. I—” She breaks off and lets out a sob and just as quickly as it ended, the burning anger returns. “You promised!” she screams, looking at me.
“I—” I stop, unsure what I can say that won’t incriminate me.
“You want them? Fine!” She is yelling and staring at the mirrored wall again. Without hesitation, she spouts an address in the depths of downtown. I know it because it’s the old address, the one where the Imitations were hidden when I found them. I go still, scared I’ll give away the truth: that the information is useless. They’ve been moved. Weeks ago. With Obadiah’s help. They are safe. For a little longer, they are safe.
Melanie goes on yelling, her eyes unfocused and head tipped toward the ceiling. Spittle forms at the edges of her mouth as her voice gains volume. “You never meant it, did you? I fell for it. Yeah, I did. And now it’s too late. And I’m finished. He’s finished. For nothing. All for nothing and no one.” She brings her gaze down to mine so abruptly, I scramble away and land on my backside. My palms go out to brace my fall and I grimace the moment they touch the dirt-coated floor.
“You,” she says, packing all kinds of meaning into the one word. “You can’t go back on it. You can still get Daniel. It was all for him, anyway. I don’t give a shit about the others.”
I shoot a glance at the shiny wall, my eyes wide as I try to think of a response that works for all the sets of ears tuning in. “Daniel?” I repeat.
It is not the answer Melanie wants. She screams unintelligibly and pulls against her bindings. A long, narrow cut on her arm breaks open. It oozes red and white trails down to her wrist before dripping into a pink puddle onto the floor. It pools over a dried spot of the same color, and I know this is not the first time she’s hurt herself in the midst of her own angst.
Pressure squeezes around my chest, like a bowtie pulled too tight. “Melanie,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me. She’s on full tilt, screaming and straining and pulling at the bindings, yanking her body this way and that until the chair begins to rock on its wobbly legs.
“Melanie,” I repeat, stealing another glance at the wall, but already knowing Titus won’t intervene. Not for this. It’s what he wants.
I reach out for her but stop short, unsure how or where to touch her that won’t escalate her panic. “You have to calm down,” I say.
She only jerks harder, screams louder. I squeeze my eyes shut against her screeching. Even if I say the right thing now, she won’t hear me.
“He got broken,” she says, “But he’s good, I know he is. Fix him … Fix him, please.”
“Melanie, please stop screaming,” I say when she pauses to suck in a breath.
And then just as quickly as the insanity appeared, it disappears. She stops wailing and her eyes clear and she looks directly at me. “Thank you for everything,” she says, so sincerely that for a moment I wonder which Melanie is real and which is the crazy. “See you on the other side.”
She blinks. I blink.
The moment vanishes. The crazy returns.
Her lids droop and narrow. Tears return. She shudders and strains against her bindings.
“What—?” I begin, more confused than before.
She opens her mouth as if to scream again. I can’t take it anymore. The screeching is grating on me, leaving my insides feeling like Melanie’s outsides and I can’t take another second. I reach out and grip Melanie’s shoulders in a firm grasp. She winces and her screams turn to wails.
“Melanie!” My own cry is barely heard over the racket she makes. She tries to shrink away from me but there is nowhere to go. I tighten my grip and she wails again and jerks hard—harder than before—and the chair rocks back. It tips up onto two legs and wobbles. I shift my weight, leaning to steady it, but my movement is all it needs to send the legs over the edge.
Melanie doesn’t fight it. Instead, she throws her weight toward it and tips her head back, still wailing, and the chair tips and crashes to the floor.
There is an audible crack as Melanie’s head hits the concrete floor and then she is silent. Her eyes are stuck open, glassy and unseeing, her face tipped toward the ceiling. White foam bubbles in her mouth, leaking out the edges and forming a pool on the floor that looks like regurgitated toothpaste. Her shoulders twitch and then she is completely and utterly. Still.
I have no idea whether she’s dead or unconscious and the fear of the first is almost too great to consider. My hand covers my mouth in horror and even though I feel the vibrations of my own vocal chords engaged, it feels like hours or days before my own scream reaches my ears.
The door opens, banging harshly against the wall as two guards hurry to where Melanie’s fallen. Still in the chair, her body is stuck in the sitting position, her knees pointed toward the bare bulb overhead. Titus strolls calmly behind his men. Worry is not even a blip on his expressional radar. If anything, he looks put out. He stands near the door, eyeing me disapprovingly, as if it’s my fault he’s been made to stand in such a dirty room while his men try to revive a probably dead girl whose injuries are at his hand.
“Someone check out that address,” Titus says to someone outside the open doorway. Footsteps fade and he turns back to the men hovering over Melanie. “Well?” Titus prompts. “Is she alive or not?”
“Sir,” one of the guards calls from his one-knee-to-the-floor po
sition beside Melanie. He has two fingers pressed to Melanie’s throat below her ear. His brows are scrunched and his lips are pressed tightly together. He waits three more beats before answering, “She’s dead.”
Titus lets out some sound that reminds me of an eye roll even though I don’t see him do it. And that is enough. His sigh of frustration is all it takes for me to lose it. I turn to him and, as if in slow motion, my eyes widen to their largest points. My feet move long before I realize I’ve told them to and then I am in front of Titus, banging on his chest, screaming so loudly I can’t think or hear or feel a single thing outside of the mantra I repeat as I strike out with my nails for his eyeballs. “Monster! Monster! Monster!”
Titus jumps back but I am right there, moving with him, bludgeoning him with fisted blows to the chest, swiping at his jaw, kicking his shins. I scream and rant and cry and release all of the fear and fury I carry for him. I cannot stop. I cannot breathe. I cannot care about a single consequence or the death sentence I am giving myself every single time my body makes contact with his.
“Monster! Monster! Monster!” I continue to scream, but it sounds breathless in my own ears now.
Titus moves again, this time somehow making it into the hallway. The guards are trying to pry me away but I lash out at them and free my arm one last time. I catch Titus in the eye and rake my nail down the squishy surface. He cries out and turns away. The shock of my success gives me pause.
I swing out again but it’s too late. My distraction was the opening he needed to get his bearings.
A wiry hand closes over my throat and my scream is abruptly cut off. Titus no longer looks bored or mildly inconvenienced. He is furiously calm and fully focused on inflicting pain. His hand around my throat squeezes hard and I choke once before that sound is also silenced by the closing of my windpipe. I try to gasp but it’s no more than a muted croak. My throat burns and my mind screams in panic. It is Melanie all over again, except this time I know it won’t end until I’ve stopped breathing.
Black dots dance at the edge of my vision. I suddenly remember my limbs and swing out with my hands. Titus sinks a fist into my gut so fast, I don’t see it coming before the wind is knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe if he let go anyway. My body convulses and goes limp and for a few agonizing seconds; the only thing holding me in place against the wall is the pressure of Titus’s hand as it squeezes away my life force.
I am both horrified and hopeless as I stare into the eyes of the man who is both my Creator and my killer. It isn’t dying I fear, but the utter void that comes after. I can’t bear the thought of being nothing in just a few moments and Titus will still be here, being everything to a world that thinks he’s one of the good ones.
It is so unfair that my life would be so pointless.
I try to gasp as the ability to breathe returns to my lungs from the hit I took in the stomach. Without the benefit of oxygen accompanying it, the pain increases and the black dots dance their way to center stage. I don’t have minutes. I have seconds.
I kick out again but it’s a lame attempt and, even though I make contact, Titus doesn’t even seem to notice. He is staring at me with something in his eyes that wasn’t there before. It’s a recognition of sorts, as if he’s really only now seeing me for the first time. I tip my chin up to try and gain passageway through my windpipe, looking down at him over the tip of my nose.
Something in his expression shifts again. “You push me, daughter,” he says softly. “Always pushing. But I’m not ready yet. You have work to do and I won’t be denied.”
Blood trickles from the open cut originating in his eyelid. It flares red and waters every time he blinks. Despite the gentleness in his voice, he is still every inch a monster. My stomach jumps, or maybe it’s the nausea threatening. Before I can decipher any of it, or convince myself I’m not imagining it, Titus releases me and steps back.
I fall in a heap, arms and legs tingling and pricking as blood flow resumes at a normal rate. I don’t care about any of it nearly as much as I relish the air passing through my windpipe and into my lungs. It burns deliciously and fills me with dizzy relief.
“What did she thank you for?” he demands.
“I … I don’t know,” I croak, too miserable to worry about the lie. It’s automatic. It’s the least of my worries.
“I would advise you to make it a priority to figure it out. Or hope I find what I’m looking for at that address. I’m running very thin on patience. Your inconvenience is fast outweighing your purpose, product.”
His words are a bite that sinks into the soft place in my heart. They render me silent, intimidated, cowered. But then I remember Melanie. And why this started in the first place. I raise my head to say something—what, I don’t know, since there isn’t much that won’t get me killed—but I don’t get a chance.
Before my mouth is fully open, Titus snaps a command to the guards and I am lifted clear off my feet and carried away. I squirm and twist but I’m still too distracted by sucking oxygen to really fight. In a few steps, I am set on my feet again. The air is different and I don’t have time to understand before the guard leaves me alone and pulls a door shut behind me. Like the others, it clicks softly as the lock engages, and I am alone.
No, that’s not true, I realize as I scan the room they’ve deposited me into. Just like the last, the cell smells like sweat and blood and pain. The setup is nearly the same except there is a bucket of water on the floor beside the bed and someone is splashing water from it up to their elbows. The lighting is different here too. It’s even dimmer with the bulb set closer to the ceiling. It throws everything into moody shadow, including the figure in the far corner bathing from the edge of the bed. Still, I don’t need facial recognition to know where I am.
Titus and his men have left me in the only place worse than killing me. I am in Daniel’s cell. And he is unbound.
Chapter Two
I suck in air over and over, trying to slow the flow of adrenaline that surges through me. Titus. Melanie. The blood. The guard who carried me here. Faces; arms; legs; a manicured hand around my throat. My mind is a whir of the last few minutes. It is hard to process and focus on any one thing.
Until my eyes adjust to the dim light.
Across the room I see him moving. Then my mind is so singularly focused that everything else drops away. There is only him, methodical movements and quiet confidence, and me, jerking hands and heaving lungs.
I almost died a moment ago. Soon, I might wish I had.
“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” The careless lilt in Daniel’s voice means he’s either unharmed or he’s even more unhinged than she is—was.
I’m too far away and the lighting is too low for me to tell whether it’s the first. My mind fills with the possibilities of the second. My broken thoughts take me down a million paths that all lead back to Melanie. To her screaming and shaking and coughing and oozing. To my part in it all. To my promise.
Even the memory—and the physical sting—left behind by Titus’s hand on my throat can’t drown out my guilt. I created this. Maybe not for Daniel; his actions led him here on his own. But for Melanie’s death, I am responsible. For my almost-death because I couldn’t keep it together, I am responsible. For whatever happens next to the warehouse across town full of hidden Imitations, I am responsible.
I press my lips together to keep sound from escaping. All I want to do is curl into the back corner of my designer closet and cry until my eyes are dry and my soul is numb.
As I watch, Daniel continues to splash water from the bucket onto his exposed arms. His undershirt must’ve been white once but has now faded to a chalky gray. He doesn’t seem to notice or care that cleaning the dirt from his arms only makes his shirt and pants look even dirtier. My stomach is a churning mess and I still can’t catch my breath. It’s as if my thoughts are still inside Melanie’s cell, struggling to catch up to the moment—to catch up to how I got in here or how I’m still alive.
&nb
sp; “You came all the way down here to see me and you’re not even going to say hello?” Daniel asks when the silence has stretched.
I open my mouth to answer, but shut it again before I can make my voice work. He is staring at me now, his bucket of bathwater momentarily forgotten. Even in the dim lighting, I can see the spark in his eyes. It is the same spark he wore in the parlor the last time I saw him, when he tried to—
“I am Ven,” I say. “Not … her.”
More splashing and dripping. More silence.
And then, “I know who you are,” he says softly.
His mattress creaks as he presses his hands down against it and pushes himself to his feet. I freeze. Maybe if I’m very still, he’ll stay there and I can stay here and—
“I was wrong last time,” he says, his steps excruciatingly steady as he approaches.
I let my hair fall into my eyes and stare at his feet, willing them to stop. I don’t know what he was wrong about, but I don’t care. I only want him to stay back. I stare at his hands swinging at his sides. Hands that are free to touch me wherever they want until Titus finally decides to unlock the door. And then something inside my brain clicks and I know what I have to do to save myself.
Information. Titus wants it. Daniel has it.
I clear my throat and my knees buckle at the pain it causes. Titus may have stopped suffocating me in time, but the pain from my crushed throat feels like death. I stumble back three steps until I hit the wall, uncaring that it’s dirty and gross against my designer dress. The wall holds me up where my own limbs cannot.
I will my voice to work but it comes out hoarse, no more than a whisper. “What were you wrong about?” I ask.
Daniel is almost in front of me, dragging a pair of threadbare slippers across the floor with each step. I force my eyes up to his, silently begging him to answer. To talk to me instead of … whatever else he is thinking of doing.
Deviation Page 2
