Welcome back to the Murder Complex, Patient Zero.
Initiate Termination.
Lark squirms under my body. I roll away from her, clutching my skull. I’ve already fought the system tonight. I can’t do it again, not twice, not when I’m exhausted, not when my stomach is empty and I haven’t slept in days. I need Meadow near me, close by, to fight it.
We’ve been separated for way too long.
Before the system takes over, I see Lark stand up and stagger away, a trail of blood in her wake.
“Stop . . .” I groan. “We have to . . . Meadow . . .”
But it’s too late. The pain intensifies, and my sight goes.
Somehow, the Murder Complex has me in its grip.
I have enough strength to lift my wrist to my mouth. “The beach,” I gasp to Rhone.
Then darkness pulls me under as the system takes control.
CHAPTER 4
MEADOW
I wake up screaming for my father.
Someone has dumped a bucket of ice-cold water over my head, and it feels like knives against my skin.
“Where is your mother?” a man’s voice asks. I try to get my bearings, figure out where I am, but my head is heavy. My mind is a million miles away.
“Where is Lark Woodson?”
I don’t answer. More water. Cold, so cold that I fear I will never be warm again.
I cough, gasping for air. I try to wipe the water away from my face, but my hands won’t move. I try to sit up, but something holds my body down, my arms and legs, a heavy weight on top of my chest. It is like I am inside of one of my old nightmares, back on the houseboat with my family when I was younger. All I had to do was wake up, and I would be safe. But this time, the nightmare is real.
There is no waking up.
“I asked you a question,” the voice says.
I groan, lift my head as far as I can. I am strapped to a metal table. Around me are gray walls. And thick bars.
Movement shifts behind my head, and someone steps into view. It is a man, pale faced and dark eyed, wearing the all-black uniform of the Initiative.
“Where is your mother?” he asks me. A name tag on his chest says Interrogation Expert, SPC. Scientific Population Control. “Where is Patient Zero?”
“I . . . don’t know,” I whisper. The fragments of my nightmare are still dancing around me, making me shiver and shake.
“Where is the Resistance?”
“I have no idea.” My voice trembles, my teeth chatter like rattling bones. The man dumps another bucket of cold water over my head.
I gasp. The pain draws forth a memory, flashes of a mission, gunshots, a dying dark-haired girl.
My little sister Peri, stolen. My brother Koi and my father, gone.
My mother . . . a murderer.
And suddenly the truth comes back to me, I remember exactly where I am. What I am.
I am a prisoner of the Initiative, with a connection to the Murder Complex in my brain. I came here to destroy the Motherboard, shut the system down for good, until I discovered that I am the only one who can end the Murder Complex. If I die, the system dies along with me.
That is the only way.
I gave myself up so that Zephyr could escape and set my family free. I wanted to die fighting the Patients, die so that the Murder Complex would die, too. A brave death, something my father would be proud of.
My plan failed. My mother escaped, my partner Sketch is nowhere to be found. The last time I saw her, she was bleeding out, close to death.
I look around the room at the dirty walls of the cell, the ceiling tiles overhead, now patched with bars that weren’t there before. The details fall into place.
I am stuck inside of the very same room that holds the very same cell where my mother was once kept.
Now I am a prisoner, behind enemy lines.
And I am completely on my own.
CHAPTER 5
ZEPHYR
Lark’s voice is in my head.
This is the Murder Complex.
I reach for a vision of Meadow, her lips against mine, her calloused hands on my shoulders. I’m angry that I’m not with her. I try to fight the system, try to force my way out of it.
I have flashes of here, and now. The rain falling from the sky, splashing onto my face.
And then I am sucked away again, back into the Murder Complex, unaware of what I’m doing. Where I’m going.
Back and forth, in and out, and I can’t get free, can’t fight it.
But then I remember the words that Rhone told me, weeks ago, see flashes of memories, us hiding out in the Graveyard, practicing. My body, chained to a steam tower, screaming at the world.
You can choose your victims, Zero. Just channel the power of the system. If you can’t fight it without Meadow, then use it to your advantage. Bend it to your will.
I have to kill, feel the need and want deep down in my soul. I can’t stop the Murder Complex inside. But I can angle it, turn it around.
Now I can choose my victim. I can be aware of my surroundings. I can focus and choose who to kill.
I imagine I’m a boy again, standing in the mirrored room in the Leech Headquarters where Lark used to work with me. I picture the Motherboard is there with me, a giant screen of numbers and codes and lines, beating in time with Meadow’s heart.
“I choose my own victims now,” I say to the screen.
It flashes bright red. Catalogue Numbers flash by, but they’re all citizens. And this time, I want Leeches.
I try to change the numbers. Beg the system to give me someone I really want. It fights back against me, and I hear Lark’s voice again, commanding me to follow orders.