The Gravers hauling the body come closer, until I can see it’s a woman, bound in chains.
Her hair is dark, matted to her head, and when they throw her to the ground, she lets out a horrible whimper that sounds like an animal on the verge of death. The woman’s limbs are too thin, way too weak for fighting. What use could someone like her be to us?
“Who is she?” Rhone asks. “Why would we want her?”
The Gravers laugh, all of them together, and it sounds like the hissing of the cockroaches that scurry among the trash.
“Her face,” the leader says. “Look at her face, and you’ll know.” He clicks his teeth again, and one of his men stoops to one knee. Grabs the prisoner by the chin and forces her to look up.
At first, all I see is the scar. It takes up half of her entire face, the skin to the left of her nose puckering so bad that it makes her look like she came right out of a nightmare. Her left eyes is missing, and part of her hair, closer to that side, has burned away, leaving wrinkled, reddened skin in its place.
“What’s your name?” Rhone asks.
The woman opens her mouth, and when she speaks, her voice is so familiar that it shocks me down to my core.
“Sparrow,” she says. Her one eye meets mine, and I gasp.
It’s gray.
Gray like a storm cloud, gray like an angry sea.
Gray like Meadow’s, and Lark’s, and everyone else in their family. An unmistakable color.
“My name is Sparrow,” the woman says again. She grimaces when she speaks the next words, spits them out like they’re full of poison. “Lark Woodson is my sister.”
CHAPTER 10
MEADOW
We have not eaten in two days.
At first, Sketch and I made a game out of our growling stomachs, laughing every time it happened, seeing whose would growl louder and longer.
But now the laughter has faded.
And a desperate hunger has taken its place. It reminds me of when I found my mother, how she was skin and bones, sunken eyes and cheeks.
If I were to look at my reflection, is that what I would see? A younger version of my mother, staring back? Sometimes, I feel a darkness lurking beneath the surface of my soul. Sometimes, I imagine I hear voices, whispering in my ears. They tell me that I am weakening. They tell me that soon, I will lose this fight.
Sometimes, I almost talk back.
It is my mother’s insanity, the same force that once took ahold on her. And now it is after me.
I am carving another line into my calf when the Interrogator comes. He brings a whip with prongs on the ends, and lashes Sketch’s back until she bleeds into unconsciousness. The next day, with another line carved, he turns on me.
Sketch and I wake, hours later, healed from the nanites, but broken down a little bit more.
Now, we sit in darkness.
“It’s so damn cold,” Sketch groans.
“Ignore it,” I say, even though everything has become numb. My lips, my toes, my ears, and I long for the warm sand, the sun on my skin, the ocean water in the afternoon heat. “Just pretend we aren’t here.”
But she is right.
The chill of the air has begun to seep its way into my bones. I am afraid that if I move, I will shatter like glass.
Sometimes, Sketch falls asleep. I keep her awake by mumbling her name or singing songs that my mother used to sing when I was only a child. Back when we were on the houseboat, safe and sound.
Now, that safety has burned to ashes, buried beneath the sea.
“I’m gonna die in here,” Sketch says. “They’ll keep you alive because they have to. But me? I ain’t worth nothing. They’ll kill me soon.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper. “That’s what they want you to believe. You have to be strong.”
“Strength is just an illusion, Protector.”
“Don’t call me that.” I shake my head. I want to tell her what my father would tell me: that strength, in the face of fear, is the only thing that will keep us alive. But the Initiative is always listening, watching.
I will not give them my father’s words.
“Can you keep a secret?” Sketch asks.
“Yes. You should know that by now. I think both of us are pretty good at keeping secrets, Sketch.”
“Prisoner humor,” she says. “Nice.” She swallows, and I can hear it, like rocks grating against each other. The heretics fork is still stuck to her throat. Dried blood has crusted on her skin. When she starts to drop her head, I remind her to stop, remind her that she’s strong enough to keep her head held high, because I know the pain that will come if she lowers it is my fault.
Sketch is only here because of me.
“I want to die,” Sketch says. She doesn’t sound sad or upset. It is an honest admission, a brave thing to tell. “I wish I were dead.”
“Then you’re lucky. Because I have a theory that we’re already in hell.”
I think of Zephyr, the time I found him lying half-dead on the street. He wanted to die so badly he tried to kill himself. Sketch has killed countless people while under the influence of the Murder Complex. I guess every Patient welcomes their own death at some point, and now, I understand.
Because I want to die, too.
The Murder Complex is connected to my brain. Every second I live and breathe, it thrives along with me. Every time my heart beats, I imagine the system sucking the life out of me.
A leech.
The Wards are right to call the Initiative that.
The door swings open behind me, and the Interrogator walks in. He unlocks the cell and glides in, then removes the fork from Sketch’s neck.