Modified- The Complete Manipulated Series

by Harper North

  I break away, face flushing red, but probably not as red as Sky’s. I let go of his shirt and pat it smooth against his chest. His heart is pounding like a jackhammer.

  “Right then. Let’s move.” I point at the sink. “Emma, you first.”

  She shakes her head. “No. If anyone has to be left behind, it’s me. Go.”

  A loud bang sounds from the room next door. The guard must be checking the stalls.

  I push Sky toward the sink. “Get ready to get Cia out of here. Don’t turn back.”

  He doesn’t protest, and that’s what I love about him. Sky has his priorities in order. He hands Emma the grate and climbs onto the sink. Jumping again, this time he catches the edge of the opening. His fingers slip, and I catch a glimpse of blood trickling into his palms. I grab onto his dangling feet and push as Cia tugs on his wrists. With a grunt, I shove upwards, and he wriggles inside.

  A new sound comes from next door, like a long stream of liquid being poured into a bowl. Biting my lip, I hold back a laugh that would surely be loud enough to give us away. I look at Emma, and her hand is clamped tightly over her mouth. I point at her and at the vent, but she shakes her head again.

  “You’ll have to pull me up,” she whispers.

  Fair enough. I hop easily onto the sink and leap, catching hold of the opening. I swing my body backward, pressing my feet against the mirror over the sink and push myself into the dark tunnel. My face crashes into the heel of Sky’s boot.

  “Sorry,” he whispers. “I can’t turn around. Can you?”

  “Maybe.” The space is tight, and the metal around us groans from our weight. “You two go on. I’ll get Emma. I don’t think it can hold us all up in one spot.”

  As they move forward, I slide backward, stretching my body across the opening until I’m peering down at Emma, who’s made it onto the sink. A toilet flushes next door. I push off the edge with my hands, sliding completely onto the opposite side of the hole.

  “Let’s hope he washes up first,” Emma whispers as she hands me the grate.

  I maneuver it awkwardly through the opening and lay it on the other side so I can slide it back in place once we’re both safe.

  The other bathroom door squeaks open, and footsteps enter the hall.

  Emma freezes. “Go, Fin.”

  But there’s no time. Pain floods my chest. We’re going to lose her. A door opens—

  “Anybody in there?” The voice is still in the hall. He must be checking the storage room.

  I lean as far out of the hole as I can, wedging my feet against the top of the vent. “Emma, now.”

  She grabs my arms and I heave, walking myself backward along the vent. I know when her feet leave the sink when she becomes dead weight on my arms.

  “You’re going to have to grab the other side,” I grunt. “Then I’ll reach under your arms and push you onto the side.”

  She lets go of one of my arms and I hear her palm slap metal.

  “We’ve got you,” Cia says from the other side. “Give me your other hand.”

  I look up and see Cia clutching Emma’s wrist. There’s just enough light coming up from below to see her little legs linked with her brother’s much stronger ones.

  Footsteps again—coming closer. Emma twists and grasps Cia’s other hand. At the same time, I loop my arms under Emma’s, lifting and shoving as Sky begins slithering forward, pulling his sister and Emma with her. I shift my hands to Emma’s belt loops, and with one final push, she’s safe inside. The doorknob turns.

  I grab the grate and slide it back into place as fast as I can, but with the bolts all over the floor, I have no choice but to hold it and hope the guard doesn’t notice my fingers.

  The door inches open, and a sheepish voice says, “Excuse me. Any ladies using this facility?”

  My fingers tremble. It’s not that the grate is heavy, but my position is awkward.

  Also, I’m terrified.

  The door swings open all the way and the guard steps in. From this angle, I can see the bored and bleary look on his face. They were drinking more than canned fruit juice at their little party back there.

  He walks directly beneath me, stepping right over one of the bolts on the floor. I lose sight of him, but the sound of a foot hitting a stall door follows. The door squeals and bangs against the stall. Not so sheepish anymore.

  I suck in a quick breath while the door continues squeaking on its hinges, and then I hold that breath, willing my body into total stillness. Two more kicks, squeals, and bangs follow as he checks each of the stalls. Then he walks right under me again, slamming his way through the door and shouting, “You were seeing things!”

  I count ten of his retreating steps before the sound fades away.

  “Grab my feet, Fin,” Emma orders.

  I turn the grate, and it’s wedged over the hole. Not a perfect fit, but maybe no one will notice it for a while. Then I grab onto Emma’s ankles. Somewhere up ahead, I hear Sky grunt and the entire vent vibrates as he army crawls deeper into the tunnel, pulling Cia with his legs, so she can pull Emma with her hands, while Emma drags me with her feet. I slide over the grate, and it stays in place. That’s one relief.

  Sky stops and I collapse between Emma’s ankles, my forehead pressed against the sheet metal, warm with the friction of our bodies moving over it.

  “Cia, how? What?” I can’t make words that make sense. “Why?”

  “Why?” Cia echoes like it’s the dumbest question she’s ever been asked. “Because that big Leech obviously wasn’t planning on any of you making it back.”

  “Reinhart,” Emma scoffs. “I knew it.”

  “We should have let Cal have him,” Sky groans. “But Cia, you should have stayed with Mom. This is too—”

  “Who do you think helped me into the vents?” she shoots back. “Not everyone thinks I’m a baby, Sky. Now duck. I need to be in the front.”

  I hear scuffling up ahead as Cia climbs back over him—with extra sharp knees and elbows from the sound of his grunting.

  “Okay, follow me.” Cia’s voice sounds ghostly that deep in the vent. “When the heat kicks on, the air blows this direction, so there must be something up ahead.”

  As if on cue, the metal around us begins to vibrate. A moment later, a rush of hot air runs up my back, blowing my hair into my mouth. I spit it out.

  “Turn your holsters so they don’t drag against the sides,” I say, twisting mine to allow my gun to rest in the small of my back.

  “And while you’re at it, hand me my gun, Sky,” Cia says.

  “Not a chance, Sis.”

  We begin shimmying forward on our elbows and stomachs. The warm air makes the vent creak and pop around us, hopefully disguising our movement if there’s anyone below. I remember the double doors at the end of the hall, the ones I thought must lead to Sunlight Gardens. I picture the map of our journey thus far and think we must be headed that way. It makes sense that the air would empty there, and suddenly I kind of hate this vent for destroying the illusion of fresh air I enjoyed so much in my brief time at Elysian Beach. Of course it wasn’t real.

  Finally, I see a faint glow up ahead. As we get closer, I can make out the outlines of Sky and Emma’s heads.

  “Stop,” Cia whispers. “It’s a grate.”

  “What’s under it?” Emma whispers back.

  “Um… a hallway. But it’s decorated.”

  “But is it empty?” Sky asks.

  “I think so.”

  “Then keep going.”

  When it’s my turn to cross the grate, I pause to peer down. The tile below me is marbled, not like the everyday industrial stuff behind us. Bright green plants in elaborate pots line the hall, but they’re too shiny to be real. The one door I can see looks heavy, and there’s a tiny window in it. An office, maybe?

  Suddenly, the heat kicks off. A shiver runs up my spine. Are we caught? Did the grate fall into the bathroom, alerting the soldiers, and now they’re all rushing to meet us here? Should we dr
op into the hallway and make a run for it?

  A quick calculation tells me it isn’t worth the risk. Our best bet to get inside the Garden is following the vent until it ends.

  That doesn’t take long. As we leave the grate behind, I realize there’s more light ahead of us—bright light. It flashes on the metal and makes me squint. At the same time, the vent begins to widen and feels more solid underneath us, like we’re no longer suspended in the air.

  “We made it,” Cia squeaks.

  “Let me see.” Sky scoots forward into the large space, and as my eyes adjust, I can see the grate in front of them. He looks back at us and grins. “We’re here.”

  “Do we have company?” Emma asks.

  Sky peers out and shakes his head. “Looks clear. We’re basically on the ground, and there are some bushes in front of us. I don’t think they wanted the residents to see how the air gets here.”

  “Can you pop the grate off?” I ask, inching up alongside Emma now that there’s more room.

  He pushes against it but then laughs. “There’s a latch.”

  “Something had to go our way eventually,” Emma chuckles. “This must double as an official escape hatch.”

  Sky pokes his fingers through the grate and flips the simple latch. He eases the grate open on a squeaky hinge. We all hunker down, waiting for a barrage of bullets, but no one even shouts an order or cocks a gun.

  We crawl out of the vent, careful to stay behind the bushes. I could cry as the soft grass tickles my palms. Once we’re all out, Sky points back into the vent.

  “Cia, you wait in there while we check things out.” He holds up a hand before she can argue. “This is a very important job. If anything goes wrong, we’ll need you to get back to Mom and tell—” He makes a face. “Tell Elias where we are. Not Reinhart. Got it?”

  I expect Cia to pout, but she nods. “Okay.”

  “And Cia?” His face looks pained, but he pulls the second pistol out of his belt. “Try not to shoot anyone who doesn’t really, really need it.”

  She beams and eagerly takes the weapon from his hand. “I won’t.”

  I reach toward her. “You know about the safety, and—”

  “Yeah. I know.” She holds the weapon with more confidence than I expected. “Lacy taught me.”

  “Lacy,” I mutter. No shock there.

  Cia slips back inside the grate, and Sky closes it behind her. “No heroics. You’ve done enough for one day.”

  She gives him a mock salute.

  “She’ll be fine,” I tell Sky as we crawl over to the bushes.

  He doesn’t say anything, but he bumps his shoulder against mine as we work together to part the branches. There’s a cobblestone path on the other side, lined with more bushes like these. Farther along, large trees with sweeping limbs shade the path. The houses here are huge, but fairly uniform, each one made out of the same tan bricks.

  Emma touches my shoulder. “Look. That must be Cho’s.”

  I lift my head and follow Emma’s pointing finger over the top of the bushes. Sunlight Gardens has its own hill, like Elysian Beach, but much bigger, and on top of it sits a mansion.

  “That seems pretty obvious. You don’t think he’d take a smaller one to throw his enemies off?”

  Emma and Sky look at me. Cho may be smart, but he’s a Natural, lacking my ability to run risk assessments on the fly. I’m sure he claimed the flashiest house he could find.

  I duck back down. “Stay between the bushes and the wall for as long as we can. Let’s try to get behind the house.”

  We stay on our hands and knees, even though my back is screaming at me to stand up and stretch after the cramped confines of the vent. But at least the ground is soft. The bushes and the cave wall grow farther apart as we get closer to the houses. I keep us next to the bushes for cover, but eventually, they come to an end, just in front of a large home.

  A chain-link fence extends from the house and then turns toward the cave wall, creating a large grassy yard for the family who lives here.

  “Why would they need a fence?”

  “Dogs,” Emma says softly. “They were going to bring their dogs.”

  “While the Dwellers burned,” Sky seethes.

  I don’t wish death by radiation on anything, but the unfairness of it all leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Originals. Naturals. EHC. Why didn’t anybody care about our fate?

  We have no choice but to follow the fence back toward the wall. Since we’ll be exposed anyway, we stand to make a run for it.

  And then a sliding glass door opens on the back of the house, and a woman steps out onto the deck. She pauses and stares at us. She has a green jacket tied around her waist, but it looks too big for her tiny frame.

  She’s also unarmed.

  We stare at each other. This woman’s older than Emma by maybe ten years, hair graying around her temples. I spot no radio on her, but I lift my weapon and say, “Freeze.”

  She raises both hands, her jaw falling open.

  “We can’t shoot her.” Panic fills Sky’s voice.

  He’s right. The noise would attract guards—with guns.

  Then I realize he means it would be wrong to shoot her.

  My face flushes. Who am I becoming?

  The woman’s chin quivers and she looks behind her, across yard after fenced-in yard. She wears a pink sweater with matching earrings. Everything about her screams civilian. Cho’s bringing in non-fighting Naturals to inhabit his utopia.

  “We can tie her up,” Emma suggests.

  The woman looks at us like she doesn’t understand what we’re saying, and I realize she probably doesn’t. “That’ll work.”

  Sky and I vault over the fence, leaving Emma to climb it. The woman is frozen in fear. We each take an arm and pull her back inside the house. We keep our weapons up just in case she has a large and very armed husband.

  The ground level is empty of anyone else. Emma catches up as we guide our prisoner into a rocking chair in the living room. I leave her and Sky to tie her up and run up the stairs to do a quick sweep. She seems to be the only person living in this enormous home, one that could comfortably house twenty Dwellers used to living on top of each other.

  Downstairs, the woman asks a question in a language I don’t understand. Emma shushes her. I emerge from the stairwell to find her bound but not gagged. The chair rocks from the force of her trembling. I wonder if she came down here to escape the Savior only to find herself under another dictator instead.

  “Cho’s not a good guy,” I say slowly, as if that could help her understand a foreign language. “Get away from him when someone frees you.”

  “Come on,” Sky says. “We have to go.”

  “Gag her first,” I say. “I’m pretty sure a scream of terror is a universal cry for help.”

  We tie the sleeve of her green jacket around her mouth and slip out the back door. I grimace at Sky. The longer we’re here, the more likely it is we’ll fail.

  “Let’s stay right behind the houses so no one else can see us out their windows,” Emma suggests.

  “What about the fences?” Sky asks.

  “We’ll throw her,” I say, and I’m only half-joking.

  We dash across the yard, and when we get to the next fence, Sky and I cup our hands for Emma to step in. She lands awkwardly on the other side. I shudder to think how fast this war would have ended for us if I had never stolen that mod kit.

  We cross eight more yards this way without any further run-ins. The last fence we come to is tall and made of solid wood planks. Emma groans.

  “It’s ok,” Sky says. “There’s a gate.”

  We exit through the gate at the side of the house and find ourselves on a massive lawn that rolls up to Cho’s pillared front porch. There aren’t any flags adorning it like there were at the dam, so I guess he does have some sense of needing to hide. Good, because when I think about him not believing his life is in danger, I want to kill him on the spot, but I have to capture him a
live to save Lacy and Talen.

  Without a word, we circle to the back of the mansion. We’re in plain sight, but all the curtains are closed. That doesn’t mean we aren’t on a security cam, though. I tighten my grasp on my pistol, which suddenly feels flimsy in my hand. I wish we still had the rifles.

  The back of Cho’s house is not as fancy as the front, which makes sense because the only thing you can see from his simple deck is the cavern wall, painted blue to mimic a true horizon. The back door is a simple slider, like our prisoner’s was.

  “Why doesn’t he have a fenced-in yard?” Sky muses.

  Emma snorts. “Because if you were as rich as whoever built this house, your dogs would live inside, sleep in your bed.”

  Drape’s life suddenly flashes before my eyes. All those years he spent following us around like a puppy, us treating him like he was our little pet, dragging him into adventures he should never have been on…

  My pulse roars in my ears as I cross the deck and pull on the sliding door hard enough to snap the lock. These doors were built to keep out Naturals, not the enhanced, and Cho hasn’t had time to arm it with anything better. No alarm goes off, and I step through dangling closed blinds into the back of a kitchen.

  Somewhere, a radio plays low music, something with calming tones.

  Sky and Emma push through the blinds, which make way too much noise as they clatter against each other. Upstairs, footsteps creak.

  Sky grabs for me as if to stop me, but I break into a run and bolt up the steps. On the second floor, a hallway stretches out before me, and a maid dressed in a blue apron with a green jacket tied around her waist—of course—drops a metal tray to the lush carpet.

  He already has servants.

  I rush her before she can shout, wrapping one hand around her shoulders and clamping the other around her mouth. “Where’s Cho?” I growl. I look into her eyes and see the bags already under them. “Tell me where he is, and we’ll let you live.”

  At my feet, wine soaks into the carpet.

  “Tia,” Cho growls from behind a closed door at the end of the hall. “If you dropped the wine again—”

  Screw it. I push the maid behind me into Sky’s arms. Either he covers her mouth, or she’s decided not to warn her boss what’s coming for him.