Life is dark and dirty, but at least it’s real. At least I’m not wandering around in the dark, ignorant to the possible light. At least I can recognize friend from enemy, truth from lies, myself from a deceiving reflection of my own making. I know who I am. I see the truth and choose to reveal it.
Missy fires bullets at a pair of Scavs, killing one of them.
Abram grabs her arm. “When you’re at the labs, I want you to search for the treatment,” he whispers. “I won’t let Tally die if living is an option.”
She looks at him, and then at me. “What? You really thought I wasn’t going to search for a cure? Oh, come on. Tally isn’t getting away from us this easy.”
It’s as if the floodgates have been flung open. Human soldiers charge up the street with their weapons and mismatched uniforms. Some drive military vehicles, tanks. Others ride in minivans, on motorcycles. I smile at the sight of them.
Our odds are good. We have a chance, and a chance is all we need.
Jets continue to battle overhead. Missiles blow the streets to pieces. I dodge the blasts, bleeding and aching with pain, and follow Jack and Tally through the surge of armed forces. Scavs emerge from the crowd. They attack the approaching Vestige, fire bullets, and throw grenades and futuristic charges.
Jack waits for me next to a tank that has the American flag dangling from the main gun. Colonel Buchanan emerges from the metal hatch and lifts Tally into the machine.
I shuffle toward them as hunks of building pound the earth like meteors and people race past me in spectral blurs. I squint my eyes when sunlight filters through the gap of high-rises.
Even in the midst of war, the sun still sets and rises—there are infinite things in a finite world.
“Are you all right?” Jack scans me for injury and touches my face. “You’re going with my dad. He will take you to one of our outposts. You’ll be safe there.”
“What? No. I’m staying with you.”
“You’re hardly wearing any clothes.”
“Easy fix. I’ll get a pair of pants.”
“Julie.”
“Jack,” I say, “I don’t want to leave you.”
“You need medical attention.”
“No. I’m fine. You patched me up real good. Give me a protein bar and I’ll be ready to take on a whole army of Purebloods.”
His expression softens. “I need to know you’re safe. People have tried to take you from me too many times, Julie. Not anymore. While I’m fighting our enemies, risking my life for what we both believe in, I must know you are waiting for me, that even the aliens cannot destroy what we’ve created. Do this for me. Please. I’ll come for you tomorrow morning, once my mission is complete.”
I will obey him because I love him. I love him so much it hurts.
“Hurry up. The Scavs will begin their advance any second. We can’t be here when the real fighting starts.” Colonel Buchanan speaks commands into his radio and clicks a refilled magazine into his machine gun. “Son, you still need to reach your rendezvous location.”
“I know.” Jack holds me closer. “Trust your instincts, Julie. Don’t follow commands just because they’re given to you … and stay alive.”
“That won’t be a problem. I’m good at staying alive.”
“Yeah, because I’m always around to save you.”
“We have a great thing going, Jack Buchanan.” I climb up the side of the tank and squeeze myself halfway into the hatch. Jack pulls himself onto the hull and kisses me so deeply I cannot tell who is breathing for who. His lips merge with mine so perfect, so real, so uniquely us.
“That’s enough.” Colonel Buchanan forces us apart. “Get inside, Julie.”
Jack jogs alongside the tank. “Dad, make sure Tally and Julie are both decontaminated and given doses of potassium iodide,” he shouts over the grind of the road wheels. “Tally needs to be given a treatment of either Neupogen or Neulasta. The granulocyte protein might buy her more time. She also needs plenty of water and pain medication.”
“I’ll take care of your girls,” he yells. “Now stop your fussing and complete your assignment, Sergeant. Your task force is waiting for you.”
I’m shoved into the tank’s main compartment and forced to sit with Tally behind the turret seat. The air reeks of gasoline and body odor. Men and women work at various stations within the tank, all controlling an aspect of our movement and artillery.
“The outpost is on the opposite side of the City. I’ll take you there once I make my scheduled stops.” Colonel Buchanan seals the hatch and crawls to where we sit. He stumbles when a bomb’s detonation causes the machine to shake. “It’s starting.”
I hug my knees and count the repetitive blast of gunfire, the rumble of distant explosions. They’re closer than they were a few minutes ago. “How long do you expect the war to last?”
“What we’re fighting today is only one of many battles. The other colonies will retaliate once they learn of our rebellion. They’ll pound us with missiles or release the virus. It will happen. If not today, then maybe tomorrow.” Colonel Buchanan squats next to Tally. “Nash needs someone to help with communications. I’m assigning you the position.”
“I’ve been discharged.” Tally props herself against the uneven wall. “Look at me. I’m dying. Nobody in their right mind is going to want me working for them. One glance at my face and they’ll toss me into the sick bay.”
The colonel grabs an oil rag from an overhead compartment and fastens it around her head, creating a bandana-like cap. “No one has to know.” He smears oil across her face to camouflage the red welts. “These last moments of your life will either define you as a victim or as a hero. They will define your place in history. You don’t stop fighting. Ever. You don’t let them win. This is a war we’re facing. As long as you’re breathing, you’re fit for work. Trust me. Keep fighting.”
She stares at him with tears in her eyes and nods.
“None of this will matter in a few years. Yes, because of our actions, humanity will survive, Lord willing, but I’m sure as soon as things get back to normal, once your kids and grandkids grow up in a comfortable world, they’ll go right back to being as ignorant and vulnerable to deceit as we were.”
“Then, why are we doing this? Why risk our necks to just prolong an inevitable end?”
“Because of the slim chance things could be different.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“The end was contained in the beginning.”
George Orwell, 1984
“I don’t feel good about this, Sarge.” Nash tightens his grip on the bundle of computer hardware. He gazes through the windshield at the empty streets, the piles of debris and deserted traffic. “We don’t have backup. If something goes wrong…”
“It won’t,” Jack says. “I’ve studied diagrams of the building. I could navigate the corridors in my sleep. We can do this, I’m sure. We’re more mobile as a small unit. Trust me.” He touches my knee and nods to confirm our mission, to assure me that whatever happens, our efforts won’t be in vain.
After today, I can go home. With Jack. With my nasty scars and battle wounds. I will heal with him and the Vestige in my pretty house on Rainbow Row. Life will be beautiful again. It must be.
Jack leans forward to have a clear view of the Illusion Complex—it houses the people and equipment responsible for the aliens’ deception. A fireteam discovered the building yesterday during the initial attack. “We have an entrance. At my signal, we move.” He slides open the passenger door and motions for us to exit.
With Nash sandwiched between us, we leave the van, and rush across the sidewalk and through a blown crevice in the building’s exterior. Electric lights flicker as we skulk through an office. Old magazines and newspapers litter the tile floor, breezing between cloned desks and chairs.
Here, the aliens created the first layer.
“Where is everyone?” Nash asks as we cross into an adjoining hallway. He fidgets with the bundle of software. “It
’s quiet. Too quiet. It shouldn’t be this quiet.”
“Bombs have a tendency to get people moving,” Jack says. “Nobody wants to die.”
I clutch my automatic rifle and grit my teeth. To see where my world was manufactured, to be close to the liars who wrecked my life—it all becomes undeniably real. I’ve known about the illusion for months, but now I’m at its source, its origin, and I must destroy it before it destroys me.
A security guard emerges from one of the many rooms—old, confused, and covered in dust as if he slept through the attack and awoke to find a vacant building. He draws a handgun from his holster, but before he has a chance to fire, I shoot him in the head. It’s instinctual. A single shot. A single death. He crumbles to the ground, into a puddle of his own blood.
Jack looks at me with his brow furrowed, jaw clenched, as if I’m the evil twin of his innocent girlfriend. “That easy, huh?”
“Yeah. That easy.”
“It shouldn’t be, Julie. I don’t want you to change into someone you hate.”
“Would you still love me, though, even if I did change?”
“Of course,” he says, “but I worry you won’t.”
Nash taps our shoulders and points to the devices bolted into the corners. “The security cameras—they’re active. See the green lights? Someone could be watching us. We need to hurry.”
I’m not ready for the conversation to end. I need another minute with Jack to prove I’m still me, that I haven’t changed completely. To think I’ve disappointed him makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry. I don’t want to be a monster. I just want to live.
Jack leads us through a revolving door and down a hallway lined with various print ateliers. Magazines, books, newspapers—everything that falsely extended the confinements of our colony were fabricated here, in these rooms. Skinny women with glossy skin and perfect hair, the models I envied and used as a rubric to grade my own beauty, were created on those screens. They were an illusion, a layer, and because of my insecurities, I fell for the ruse.
“Dang it,” Nash says when he lifts a tattered book from the floor. He smears the debris from the cover. “I guess the next installment won’t be released any time soon.”
“Sometimes it’s better not to know the ending,” Jack says, “because you can at least hope for the best possible scenario. Knowing the truth hurts. And a book shouldn’t make you hurt.”
I stride into the enclosed overpass connecting the complexes. The glass walls glisten with sunlight and warmth. I stop for a moment to gaze out at the stretch of urban decay as a fire plume rises in the distance, followed by a sonic blast. Several bombed skyscrapers collapse and create a massive dust cloud.
We’re nearing the end of this story, and I’m not sure I want to know the ending. Wouldn’t it be easier, less painful to quit now and believe in the best-possible scenario?
Jack walks to the opposite end of the overpass. With a tug, he unseals the entrance to the connected building. Nash and I follow him through the factory, past boxes of clothes, kitchen supplies, and merchandise with fake import tags. Robotic arms paste lids onto cans of food, seal bags of coffee—civilization is manufactured by machines and label-makers.
The sight makes me sick.
“We’re not alone,” Nash says. “The machines are being controlled by someone. I feel them watching us. You feel them too, don’t you, Julie?”
“You’re paranoid,” Jack says.
“Paranoia is what’s kept me alive this long.”
We leave the factory floor and climb a flight of stairs to the studio level. Static blares from the speaker system. Electrical surges cause the lights to spasm, illuminating the vast space in flickering gasps. Surrounding us are sets of popular television shows and newsrooms, cameras, film equipment, and wardrobe racks. Bodies litter the floor of the editing lab. Why are these aliens dead? Who killed them?
“Yep, I knew it.” Nash curses and stumbles backward. “We’re gonna die.”
Jack kneels to inspect a corpse. “They’ve been dead for a few hours.”
“What happened? Did they commit suicide?”
He shakes his head. “These people were shot with military-grade weapons.”
“But we didn’t kill them,” Nash says. “So who did?”
“They knew too much. The government didn’t want us finding any of their loose ends.”
“The Scavs?”
“Yeah. The Scavs. Be on your guard. They might still be in the building.” Jack, with his gun aimed at the encroaching darkness, leads us to the building’s core.
We reach the main broadcast studio. Nash goes into the control room and hooks up his equipment to the computer system. Jack adjusts the cameras and lighting, reorganizes the set.
“Are you nervous?” I ask.
Jack shrugs. “I haven’t had time to be nervous.”
“What will you say?” I bite my cheek and wipe my sweaty palms on my thighs. “When the cameras start rolling and you have everyone’s attention, what will you tell them?”
“The truth,” he says as he drags a desk into the soundstage. “It’s enough.”
“I’m hacking into the broadcast signal right now,” Nash shouts from the control room. “It might take a while, though. There are a ton of firewalls.”
“Work fast. We’re running out of time.” Jack straightens his t-shirt and restyles his hair. He turns to me for approval. “Do I look okay?”
“Yes,” I say with a smile, “you look okay.”
It happens in a single, shattering moment. Two seconds for my entire world to fall apart. The studio doors are kicked open. Scavs rush into the room with their weapons aimed and open fire, spraying the soundstage with lead. I watch as Jack is pelted with bullets. Blood gushes from his torso, soaks his clothes. He takes one step forward and crumbles to the ground. I hear myself scream. I feel my body lurch into motion and my finger press the trigger of my rifle. This can’t happen. Not again.
The next few minutes are nothing but flashes of violence, a montage of blurred movements. I charge at the armored soldiers. I kill the first two with shots to the neck. I tear the helmet off the third alien and break his skull with a blow to the head. My mind doesn’t register what I do, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it is better that I don’t understand what I’m capable of inflicting.
When my cognizance resurrects, I am standing amidst a carpet of bodies, trembling, with tears streaming my face. Nash stares at me from the control room in shock, but I don’t care. He is alive because of me. Alive. Surviving. Because of my transformation.
“Jack…” I stumble to his side and kneel in the puddle of his blood. “Don’t do this to me, Jack. Don’t you dare do this.” I curse and cling to his hand. His flesh is white. His breathing is labored. He’s dying. “You hold on. You keep holding on and you don’t let go.”
Jack gazes up at me, writhing. “Four times. I was shot four times.” He moans and struggles to lift his shirt. “My leg … my shoulder … twice in my abdomen. Can you find exit wounds?”
I inspect the holes. “You were shot clean through the shoulder and … one of the bullets grazed your ribcage.” I roll up his pant legs, struggling to lift the fabric past his knees. “A bullet is lodged in your left femur. And I can’t find an exit wound for the bullet in your abdomen. Tell me how to fix you.”
“I’ll go find a first-aid kit,” Nash shouts.
“No, stay there,” Jack commands in a weak voice. “Keep working.” He looks at me and motions to the open threshold. “First, make sure the doors are locked.”
I scramble to my feet, slide a tripod through the door handles, and use every bit of my remaining strength to pile furniture against the panel. “Now what?”
“Unclasp my belt,” he says, “and tighten it above my leg wound.”
I remove the strip of leather from his hips and lasso it around his thigh. My hands shake as I take the knife from his pocket, cut his t-shirt into bandages, and use the fabric to bind his sho
ulder and waist. His blood stains my skin. I watch him squirm. He can’t die. I won’t let him.
“You patched me up real good, Julie. I’ll be fine. I promise.” He touches my cheek to redirect my attention from the wounds to his eyes. “I won’t die today. Not today. But because I look so bloody awful, you have to be the one,” he whispers, “to tell the truth. It has to be you.”
The thought of being on television, my voice projected throughout Severance, sends a stampede of anxiety through my body. I shake my head. “Jack…”
“It has to be you,” he says. “You know what needs to be said. Do it for me, for Jon.”
“I’m scared.”
He squeezes my hand tight. “Me, too.”
“I’ve hacked into the broadcast signal,” Nash shouts. “Let’s do this.”
****
The world is composed of layers. We are composed of layers. Everything in the universe is an interwoven web of truth and lies, hope, belief, the choice to see past the vast stretch of constellations and into the core of what unites us all. I can do this. I can take a stand. For Jack. For Jon. For myself. Because of our efforts, history will remember us. Humanity will survive because of our open eyes, our sacrifice. The Vestige will be a symbol of awareness. For the rest of time.
I lean my weight against the desk, vulnerable to the many cameras. Jack watches from within the control room. He’s propped in a metal chair, slumped forward with bags beneath his eyes. If I had to choose between saving the world and saving him, I’d save him. I’d keep saving him.
“You can start talking once the cameras flash green,” he says into the microphone. “Don’t be nervous. You got this. You’re pretty and persuasive. If you can win the Listers’ allegiance, you can rescue humankind. I have faith in you, Julie. A ton of faith. What you say will save the world.”
“No pressure.” I swallow the lump in my throat and fidget with a discarded pencil. My heart is a bird trapped in a box, fluttering, ramming against the walls of its enclosure, trying to escape. Has my tongue always been this swollen? I can’t seem to remember my name. Did it start with the letter J—Julio, Jane, Janice, Jenna?
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