I gave myself up for the cause.
I will give nothing else away today, or tomorrow, or however long they keep me here.
“I don’t know who the Resistance is,” I say. “But if there is a Resistance, it sounds like you have bigger problems than interrogating a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“Oh, you’re much more than that.” The Interrogator grins. “And I guarantee, you’ll spill all of your secrets in due time.”
He turns to a metal table. There are all kinds of devices on it. Things that should be in a hospital, not in a dirty cell in the belly of the Initiative Headquarters. Sharp things that I don’t want anywhere near me.
“Do you know, Miss Woodson, what the heretics fork method is?”
I do not speak.
“No, you wouldn’t. Uneducated, as all the Shallows citizens are. Worthless mutts without any real importance to this dying world.”
“Is that how you justify the mass murder of thousands of innocent people?” I ask.
He ignores me. “This is the heretics fork,” he says, holding up a metal fork with two red prongs on each end. A collar is attached to the center of the fork, as if it were made for being strapped around someone’s neck. “A beautiful device, used all the way back in the Medieval Era. Do you know what that is, Miss Woodson?”
“Does it matter?” I cannot look away from the fork. The prongs are as sharp as knives.
“Everything matters,” the Interrogator says. “You see, this clever little invention is something your mother would’ve loved to use. I’ll show you how it works, in just a moment.” He holds it up to the light, tilts his head. “Unless you want to tell me where your mother is?”
“My mother is dead,” I say. I look right into his cold, black eyes.
“That, my dear, is where you are wrong.”
I refuse to look away. He continues.
“We know about your mother’s fail-safe. If she dies, the Initiative dies, too.” He paces back and forth, shiny black boots on pale gray pavement. “Just as we know about the connection in your brain. We’re working to reverse the connection your mother has to the system. But your connection, Miss Woodson, is something beautiful.”
“So you know that you have to keep me alive.” I hide my fear from him. I refuse to be weak. “How long are you going to torture me, Interrogator? How long are you going to try to make me scream, beg for you to stop until I give you the information you want?” I swallow, then laugh the way my mother would have. “It’s been far too long. I haven’t bent. I haven’t broken. You can burn me with fire and pierce me with knives, but I will never tell.”
“Our doctors are working on a surgery,” he says. “We might not be able to remove the connection from your brain. . . . Your mother’s work was beautiful. Brilliant.” His eyes glitter, like he worships my mother. I imagine most of the Initiative does, in a way. “But in due time, Miss Woodson, we might be able to control you. Patient Zero, as you may well know, could use a perfect counterpart. You are in our top group of candidates.”
I stop breathing. Stop feeling fear.
Now it is only hate.
He kneels down in front of me and puts his hand on my cheek. I will not flinch. I will not show weakness. “They said you were a strong one, and you’ve proven them all right.” He taps the tip of my nose with the fork. It’s cold. “This method isn’t for you.”
The Interrogator stands, lifts his arm to his wrist before he speaks again. “Bring her in.”
Cold sweat trickles its way down my back. I wait, and as minutes pass, I hear commotion outside of the room. A voice shouting, and the sound of Initiative boots on hard ground.
The door outside of my cell swings open, and two guards drag a hooded, writhing girl into the room.
“Just wait till I get my hands on you, you fluxing ChumHeads!”
I recognize that voice. I haven’t heard it in . . .
I press my face to the bars as they rip the hood from her head, and the sight of her, alive, is enough to bring a smile to my face.
It’s Sketch.
CHAPTER 7
ZEPHYR
When I come to, it’s dark.
And wherever I am, it smells like crap.
The Graveyard.
I sit up. My head wobbles like crazy. I have flashes of what I think are memories from my time under the Murder Complex. Lark’s laugh, her wild eyes. Blood on my hands, a trigger squeezed, a scream splitting the night.
Somewhere in the distance I hear voices, a twang and a smack that sort of sounds like someone throwing knives. Then footsteps, coming toward me.
I lie back down and pretend like I’m still out of it, because I don’t want to talk right now. I don’t want to explain myself.
Someone flips on a lantern.
“You can stop pretending,” a voice says. It’s light and airy, a young girl. Dex.
I groan and open my eyes. Dex has blonde hair, in dreadlocks that hang to her shoulders. She’s small but strong, and she might be half insane. She’s several years younger than me; maybe fourteen at the most. And she has two different colored eyes. One blue like Talan’s, one green, like mine.
Dex sits down next to me and sets the lantern right by my head. It’s too bright.
“Get that thing out of here,” I groan.
“So the kamikaze awakens,” Dex says. She bites her bottom lip, tilts her head sideways. “You know, I warned Rhone that you weren’t ready to go out so close to the Dark Time alone. You think you’ve got a hold on the system, Zephyr, but you’re wrong. You’re getting weaker, the longer you’re away from Meadow.” She sighs, cracks her knuckles. “Ah, whatever. You’re back to normal now, I guess. It’s all in the eyes.”