She opens her eye, stares right at me. “Until the day she linked the Murder Complex to Meadow’s brain. She was an infant. Just a baby, and Lark . . . did what she did, and I knew. I knew I’d lost my sister to the science.”
She coughs into her sleeve, sinks slowly back toward the ground. She looks so small and frail, like a Ward child. She looks like she wants me to believe her.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s not to trust the people in this world.
“Why should I believe you?” I ask. “How do I know that any of this is the truth?”
Her eye looks wild for a second, like she’s just seen someone come back from the dead. She takes a deep, shaky breath. “The things I did back then . . . I’ll never be able to run or hide from them. I barely made it out of the Leech building alive. If it weren’t for my training, I wouldn’t have survived.” She points at her scars. “Lark did this to me, when Meadow was just a baby. My own sister, when I tried to tell her that what she was doing was wrong.”
I can picture it in my head, hear Lark’s cackling laugh, see her swaying on her feet as she chases her sister down.
“I begged the Gravers to bring me to you. I want to help, Patient Zero. I want to do something good.”
“Good?” I ask. “What good can come from being Lark Woodson’s sister? What good can come from anything in the Shallows? Meadow is gone. If anything, all you want to do is help so that you can get to her and kill her yourself. End the Murder Complex forever.”
Sparrow sighs, then shakes her head. “I do want to kill someone,” she says, lowering her head. “But it’s not Meadow. I was wrong about killing her. Sure, it would end the system, but the Initiative would still be in charge. They’d still have their weapons, and their strength. There’s another way, a better way, to solve all of our problems.”
What’s left of Sparrow’s Catalogue Number wrinkles as she frowns, and for a moment, the lantern flickers. Her burns come to life, like worms squirming across her face. She stares at me, and I stare at her, and the fire in her eye matches the fire in mine.
“Who do you want to kill?” I ask.
Before she even speaks, I know the answer.
“My sister,” Sparrow says. “I want to kill Lark Woodson.”
CHAPTER 14
MEADOW
Waking up is the hardest thing I have ever done.
I feel like I’m stuck beneath the waves, getting pummeled left and right as they break over the top of my head. I want to breathe, want to break free, but the water keeps pulling me back under. A voice calls out to me from the surface, muddled and far away.
“How do you feel, Miss Woodson?”
Someone pries open my eyelids. A light shines, too bright and too close, and I flinch away.
“She’s responsive. Give her a moment.”
“We don’t have a moment, Doctor.”
“She’s under my care, and I’ll be the one conducting business in this operating room.”
Feet shuffle. Someone takes a deep breath. “The Commander wants her now.”
The Commander.
The Initiative.
It’s a name that strikes fear into my heart, a hammer pounding relentlessly. And then I remember where I am, what just happened to me, why there are bindings across my body and a ceaseless tingling in my limbs.
I open my eyes and scream.
I thrash. My head is loose, so I’m able to sit up enough. A nurse tries to settle me back down, but I bite her hand, hard.
Blood gushes against my teeth and I refuse to let go.
It’s chaos. Screaming, feet pounding.
I want to get out.
I want to break free.
It takes two people to pry my jaw from the nurse’s hand. I spit blood in their faces, still thrashing like a fish onshore.
And that’s when I feel it.
Heaviness, in the back of my head.
Sort of like there is something latching on to my skull, refusing to let go.
I freeze, eyes wide. “What did you do to me?”
Doctor Wane comes over, her surgical mask hanging from her neck. “Meadow, it’s best not to stress yourself out after such an invasive surgery.”
“Invasive?” I’m breathing hard, heavy. There’s a beeping behind me somewhere, and it pounds in time with my heart. Loud, louder, so loud I want to scream and shut it out but I can’t move. “What did you do to me?”
Doctor Wane clicks her tongue. Her eyes are soft. They tell me I can trust her, like windows to her soul.
Liars.
“We did what we had to, to salvage the mission of the Murder Complex.” She motions for someone to assist her. “Help her upright. But don’t unbind her.”
A male nurse scurries over. His eyes widen as he unfastens my neck and presses a button, lifting my bed so that I’m almost upright on my feet, secured by the bindings.
“I’ll kill you for helping them,” I whisper to him. “You deserve to die.”
He trips as he stumbles backward, lands on his butt. I laugh like my mother.
I laugh because I feel insane, and I laugh so hard that soon tears stream down my cheeks.
Doctor Wane waits until I get ahold of myself.
“We’ve installed a Regulator into your central nervous system,” she explains. She stands just across from me, a sick smile spreading across her face. “It’s a beautiful thing, really. A way to control you, without threatening the life force of the Murder Complex. We can speak to you at all times, give you orders through the system. . . . Would you like to see it?”