“And if I refuse?” I ask. “Or if I bring her in, and she refuses?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Oh, I think you’ll find that convincing you, the both of you, will be quite the fun little game.”
He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a NoteScreen. He stands, places the device onto my lap, and heads for the door.
“You’ll leave first thing in the morning,” the Commander says. “A quick tap on the screen should be all the convincing you’ll need.” He shuts the door behind him, and I am alone.
I stare at my lap.
The NoteScreen stares back.
I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to know what horrors will lie on its face the second it comes to life.
But I reach out and tap the screen.
It is my nightmare, come true.
It is my world, crumbling away like ashes or dust.
It is an image of a wooded area. Trees tower all around, and somewhere in the distance, I think I see a flickering fire. There is movement, near the base of a tree.
There is a trembling child. Lying against the trunk, curled up in a ragged blanket. The child’s back is to the camera, so I can see all of their hair is shaved away. I gasp as I see the same black device as mine stuck to the back of the child’s neck, and I know.
It’s her.
“Peri,” I whisper. I press my face so close to the screen that my breath fogs it up. I wipe it away, and I see Peri roll over onto her side, so that she’s facing the camera. Her face is smudged with dirt. Her bald head is covered in cuts. Her eyes are dim, like fading lights. There is a metal cuff on her wrist, the color of the springtime sea. It shows how thin she is, how small. She trembles, and I see her breath come out in thick fog. She moans, just once, and then she goes still.
“Peri, hold on. Just hold on,” I hear myself say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll come for you. Daddy will come for you. Koi will help.”
She’s crying.
“You’re okay,” I say, wiping tears from my own eyes, and I wish she could hear my voice, know that I’m here, I’m watching, and I’m going to make it all better somehow. “You’re okay. . . . You have to be okay.”
Suddenly, the image fades, pulling her into darkness. I tap the screen again, but it does not light back up. She’s gone.
“Peri?” My voice cracks. “No. Come back. Just come back to me.”
I tap it again, and again, and again, but her image does not return.
The fury comes from out of nowhere.
I don’t have control of myself anymore. I stand up and throw the NoteScreen across the room. It shatters against the wall, bursts into a million pieces. I grab the chair I was sitting on and launch it against the door. The sound is deafening, a roar that mirrors the blistering hate inside of my heart. “Let her go! Just let her go!”
I scream my sister’s name.
I scream for her brokenness, and for mine.
I grab a shard of the NoteScreen’s glass, the sharpest, longest one, and aim it toward myself.
I could end this now. If I die, everything the Initiative has built will die, too. It’s worth it. For the first time in my life, survival is futile. Dying is the key.
But the second I thrust the shard toward myself, right over my throat, I hear a voice.
The Commander. I wouldn’t do that, Miss Woodson. If you kill yourself, rest assured that your sister would soon join you in death.
There’s a jolt of pain.
Peri screams again.
I drop the glass. “Get out of my head!”
I curl into a ball on the middle of the floor. I can feel the pieces of myself tumbling around, breaking into fragments with every second. Soon they will be as tiny and worthless as grains of sand.
I rock back and forth, whispering her name.
“I’ll do it!” I scream. “I’ll do whatever you want!”
That’s a good girl, the Commander says.
The door of the room slides open. I can’t live for myself, and I can’t die. Everything I do goes back to her, and I will do it. Whatever they ask, I will do it, because Peri is worth the worst deeds in the world.
Sometimes, we have to give up everything, throw our lives into the line of fire, if it means saving the ones we love.
CHAPTER 17
ZEPHYR
I wake up, drenched in sweat.
I’m breathing hard and heavy. I feel like I’m going to puke.
It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory.
“No,” I say to myself.
And then I really do puke.
Because it hits me. All this time I didn’t know. I didn’t know, and now she’s dead, because of me.
She loved me.
Talan loved me. And not as just a friend. She loved me as more than that, in her own way, and she didn’t have much love left to give, but she gave it to me.
How did I not see it? How did I not know?
The last few days of her life, I just ran off. Left her alone, chased after some girl I barely even knew. Then Talan came, and she gave her life away so I could keep mine.
And I’m just sitting here, hiding like a ChumHead in the Graveyard, not doing anything to avenge her.
I puke again, emptying my stomach. Sparrow’s snores cut off, and she wakes up.
“What happened to you?” she asks.
Our eyes meet. And that’s when it starts.
Welcome back to the Murder Complex, Patient Zero.
Initiate Termination.
“No,” I gasp. I look at Sparrow for help, but we’re both in chains. “RUN!”