Earthquake (19 page)

I’m too tired
to talk to Logan—to keep yet another secret from him—so even though I know he’ll be hoping I’m coming back to our room, I don’t. I need another night to myself. In my old room. In my own space. A place that belongs to
me
, me and not Rebecca.

Again, I wish I’d never decorated the room Logan and I shared that way. Because I’m not Rebecca. Over the last few days that has become so clear. I
was
Rebecca. I know that. But I’m not her anymore. I’m different. And Logan’s going to have to accept that.

I reach a line in the carpet and start counting steps to where the room I created is sitting behind a very plain wall—hidden from sight. I’ve counted my ninth step and am about to transform the wall back into a door when Daniel’s voice yanks me out of my stupor.

“Tavia, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to bed. You need your rest.”

My brain is moving so slowly that I can’t come up with an immediate response. “I-I-I just want to go”—and then I realize where else this hallway leads to—“check on Benson real quick. Look in on him. Make sure he’s okay.”

Daniel nods shortly, but he seems nervous. “Just be fast. Get to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” I walk past where my comfy bed is waiting for me with more than a little regret. Now I
have
to go see Benson.

As I walk I can’t help but wonder, what was
Daniel
doing there? Of course, that’s not something I could ask. Hopefully he’ll be gone when I come back in five minutes.

Fact is, I don’t even have to talk to Benson. He doesn’t have to know I’m there. A quick glance into the two-way mirror and then I’ll go.

And I won’t have been completely lying.

I push through the familiar doors to the prison area, but rather than finding the serene, tired environment I expect, I discover three security people waiting inside. All now familiar, if not friendly, faces.

“Perfect,” the woman says. “We were just trying to decide whether or not we should attempt to fetch you.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s been asking for you for hours.”

“Why?” I ask as she begins to unlock the door.

“He won’t say,” the woman says with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“I’m shocked,” I mutter. I glance through the window and see Benson pacing—more like stalking—from one end of the tiny room to the other.

I walk in, and the door closes behind me, but I just stand there, silent.

Benson stops and sighs in relief. “Thank you for coming. I wasn’t sure if you would be . . . sleeping.” He shrugs. “I swear I don’t even know if it’s day or night anymore.”

I don’t tell him that it’s two in the morning. That I didn’t respond to his request. That I didn’t want to see him at all. That seeing him makes every emotion in my body rage like a swollen river.

Each time I’ve come to see him he seems more like himself. His library self. The self I was so in love with.

Maybe am still in love with.

Seeing him like this breaks my heart all over again. I stand with my arms crossed over my chest as much to keep my fingers from reaching for him as anything.

“Did you finish your project?”

I close my eyes. “Not quite. But we’ve passed the biggest hurdle.”

“Thomas—my dad—I hate calling him that. Anyway, after you left he came back to talk with me. He told me that . . .” His voice trails off, and he just stands there. Silent and helpless.

“What, Benson?” I say, too harshly. I don’t mean it. My exhaustion is getting the better of me.

“So, you know how you got rid of your scar?”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it. My chest spasms, and I’m sucking in loud breaths, trying to stay in control as I consider everything that lead to that decision.

He raises his arms—clearly wanting to comfort me—but I hold up a hand and he stops. Stands back until I’m in control again. “Yes, I did,” I say finally, ignoring the fact that I was freaking out only seconds earlier. “We’ve discussed this.”

“Could you . . . could you do it for me?”

My eyebrows lower. I don’t understand.

“My—my mark,” he clarifies. “Could you take it away?”

I think of the bone-deep weariness that even my abilities can’t ease. “Tonight?” I ask in a small voice.

He steps so close I have to steel myself against moving away.

Or closing the tiny gap.

“Thomas says you’ve decided to take me with you when you run,” he whispers, always wary for listeners. “The truth is, my chances of dying tomorrow are pretty damn high,” he says, his voice gravelly. “I don’t have the protections you do.”

“I won’t let anyone—”

“I know,” he interrupts, then reins in his temper. “But do you really think you can just walk out of here? That they’re going to simply let you go?”

I’m silent. I can’t count how many times I’ve asked myself that. I know we’re not going to simply be leaving—we’ll be escaping. Part of me is glad he knows it too. He’ll be prepared.

“I just . . . I just don’t want to die as a Reduciate. Surely you can understand that.”

I can. And he knows how much his mark has meant to me—irrational or not.

“It’s got to be a small thing for you, isn’t it?” he asks, his eyes pleading with me. “Please?”

“Of course I will, Ben,” I whisper.

He looks like he’s about to cry for a second before he nods stoically and turns to the side.

I was too distracted to realize what would inevitably come next.

He reaches for his shirt, and I can’t pry my eyes away as he peels it off, revealing his chest, bare from the waist up. He looks up at me after setting his shirt on the bed, and we’re both still as a veritable lightning bolt travels between us. His eyes darken with wanting, and I know he felt it too.

“Turn around,” I whisper, everything in my body shouting at me to go to him—to throw myself against his skin and soak up that tangible warmth only he has ever been able to provide. He turns, and I’m eye level with his black mark.

It looks ugly on his skin. Not for what it actually looks like, but for what it
means
. It’s not simply that he spent most of his life living in a Reduciate compound, it’s that he was a thrashing twelve-year-old boy, abandoned by everyone he loved. The lines are thick, but not crisp, and where the circle of the ankh curls out into the shepherd’s crook, I see a wave where the needle must have slipped, just a fraction of an inch. In my head I can hear Benson screaming, both from pain and from outrage. The scene is so clear in my imagination that I want to pull my hand back from the dark ink, as though it had a life of its own.

“Kneel,” I say, but I have to clear my throat and repeat myself before the word is understandable. He drops to his knees, and I pull up a chair. I sit close to him, my thighs on either side of his hips, barely brushing him, even though the brief contact feels like touching a hot iron.

I look at his shoulder and picture what his skin would look like without the mark. Then, with two fingers, I reach out to touch it.

And stop a hair’s breadth away.

Can I touch him without losing control? After such a long day, can I be strong for five more minutes?

I brace myself, but the feel of his soft skin under my fingertips still makes a shudder of ecstasy travel down my spine.

Focus
, I tell myself.
Just paint
.

I make little brushing motions with my fingers, and like a gummy eraser, the black mark slowly smudges and then disappears.

It can’t have taken more than a minute or so, but the sensations that jolt through my body each time I touch him make it feel like an hour.

“It’s done,” I say, and my voice shakes even uttering those two tiny words.

“Is it gone?” Benson asks, and in his hesitation, I know he can hardly believe such a thing could be true.

“Completely.”

He drops all the way to the floor now, his chin almost touching his chest. “Thank you,” he says, and it’s whispered like a prayer.

He turns to look at me and seems to realize for the first time what an intimate position we’re in—his torso nestled between my thighs. I know I should stand, walk away, put distance between us, but his eyes paralyze me as he turns all the way around. His fingers tremble as he runs his hands very slowly up my legs as though he can’t help himself.

My thighs, my hips, my waist, then his fingers are gripping my ribs and his breathing is shallow and fast.

I can’t move. I can’t think. No, I can think one thing. Only one. How much I want him. How much my body needs to be next to his.

How long it’s been since I held him and called him mine.

My will is splintering, cracking, and I know in seconds there’ll be nothing left and I’ll be standing in a room with Benson, with his shirt already gone.

I’m on my feet before I can let myself regret my decision. I almost shove him over getting away. I can’t be feeling this, not now. Not tonight. My lungs are on fire as I back away, my hands held up in front of me.

“I can’t . . . I . . . I just—” But I can’t speak coherently. I fumble for the doorknob behind me and fling the door open, nearly barreling over the woman who unlocked it. I cross through the doorway, and though I hear Benson call my name, I slam the door against it.

And I run.

I shove the
heavy door closed and press my back against it as though I were barring something out.

“Tavia?” Logan rises from the chair he was apparently lounging in, his feet bare, his belt off.

Where am I? I ran to Logan. I fled to our shared room. Our shared world.

That realization hits me like a boulder. I escaped to
Logan
.

“I—I—” Now that I’m here, I’m not sure how to explain why I came.

What I wanted. What the hell I was doing.

But on some level, it makes sense. For as long as I can remember, Logan—in so many lives—has meant safety to me. But what kind of safety is it tonight? Safety from Benson? Safety from myself?

“I came home,” I whisper. And even though the words feel strange coming from my lips, they feel so true. I
know
that this is where I belong. This is where Fate intends me to be. Not just in this room—with Logan. With my eternal lover.

I slide into his arms with an intrinsic naturalness that comes from thousands of lifetimes of doing this exact thing.

We fit like puzzle pieces.

A tremor of guilt ripples through me because I know that I might fight this fated joining another day. Assert my independence and insist that I
do
have a choice—that I can change my destiny. But today I’m out of energy to fight.

Today I will be precisely what the universe wants me to be.

And the universe wants me in Logan’s arms.

Tonight I hold nothing back. I always have before. Even that first night after his memories came back—so full of bliss and delight—I held back. Because even though the feelings were all there, Logan was a stranger. And I knew it.

Since then there have been doubts, worries. They were always present, gnawing at the edges of my subconscious.

They aren’t gone. If anything, they’ve multiplied.

But tonight I make believe.

Tonight I
pretend
they’re not there.

Tonight I give him everything.

• • •

The red numbers on the clock read 5:27 when I slip out of bed early and transform Logan’s shirt into my own clothes.

I’m silent.

Because I’m sneaking away.

It’s easy to think your reasons are good enough in the dim, seductive darkness of the night. But even underground, without the sun, sunrise is illuminating, laying bare my secrets, fears, and justifications.

I look at Logan, still sleeping heavily, his profile barely visible in the murky darkness. I feel like I’ve used him. And even though I know he wouldn’t mind—he’s as bad as Benson at taking whatever he can get—I don’t want him to look me in the eye. To see that I’m unsure again.

To know that even as I lay in his arms last night, I dreamed of Benson.

So I make myself soft socks, pick up my worn Chucks, and slink away before he can wake up and catch me.

I descend the wide stairs to the atrium, where a couple of people are working on creating what looks like a huge Viking ship on one wall, and, without pausing to check it out, I go directly to hallway that will take me to the replica of my Michigan room.

I can’t face Daniel yet.

Can’t face anyone.

I drop into my twin bed fully clothed and sleep fitfully for a few more hours, plagued by nightmares. Shapeless forms chase me, their skin mottled with pox, like the diseases of the past. Right before I wake they catch me. They surround me, their reddened skin breaking and oozing, fingernails raking my arms, my face. They gather closer, closer, suffocating me, more and more of them, piling on top of me until I can’t breathe. Until the weight of them crushes the air from my lungs, breaks my bones, presses my insides.

I gasp for air as I sit up. Every part of my body is tingling. I’m not sure what time it is now, but there’s no way I’m going to get back to sleep. My shirt is soaked with sweat, and my sheets are clammy.

I can’t go back to Logan. Not just
now
—not ever. And not because of our differences or his lack of understanding about humans. Oddly, it seems like none of that matters anymore.

It’s because of Benson.

I don’t have that universe of love to return to Logan. I’m not convinced I’m even
capable
of it without the eternity of memories that Logan has. That I’m
supposed
to have. The love I have for him has the same finite limits of any human.

And with so little to give to begin with, it’s not fair to offer him only a fraction of that sparse portion. Even if I had all of my heart to give, it would feel paltry in comparison.

But to offer him only the half of my heart that’s truly his would be downright insulting.

And only one half belongs to him.

The other still belongs to Benson. I know that now.

I lean my head against the mirror and feel the soothing cold spread from my forehead to my cheeks, slowly cooling away the fear from my nightmare.

Although it’s almost as terrifying to admit to myself that I still love Benson. Love the boy who betrayed me and got my guardians killed. But I can’t deny this feeling. Or the way my heart wants to beat out of my chest when I see him, the sympathy I can’t keep myself from feeling.

The want I felt deep in my belly when I saw him without his shirt on last night. This morning?

It’s like the whole confrontation in Camden never happened.

I’m so quick to forgive him. Is that a good thing or not? Does it make me more goddess-like?

Or more human?

And which do I want to be?

I glance at my clock. 6:54. Somewhat early morning, but not extreme. I don’t want to go to the lab yet, but suddenly this room feels too small. Claustrophobic. Not enough space for the explosion of my emotions.

I decide I need a kitchen.

I transform the back wall into air to make sure I don’t run into anything important, then I carefully transform a few more beams, hoping I’m not about to really disturb the architecture.

One final beam lets in a streak of light, and I realize I’ve hit another room. I guess I should have expected that. People don’t just build enormous walls full of empty space. I’m about to fill in the hole before anyone notices what I’ve done, but curiosity gets the better of me.

I stoop down and peer through.

It takes a second for my eyes to focus. Then I’m on my feet, my hands tearing at the wall for a few seconds before I remember my powers. The hole becomes Tavia-sized, and I step through into the battered remains of a familiar prison, the faint scent of smoke lingering in the air.

“Benson,” I breathe, rushing forward. But his cell is empty. No, no, it’s the
wrong
cell. In
way
the wrong part of this building. I look around and realize that although it looks a lot like Benson’s prison—has nearly the same layout—it’s not the same.

A second security wing, maybe? Hidden in the walls of the Curatoria? But . . . it’s been destroyed. Like something exploded.

All over the shiny white tile.

Oh gods.

I can’t breathe as I stare around me, turning in a circle to take in the scene. The space where the walls of a prison used to be, three white squares of floor, each smaller than the next, three matching two-way mirrors.

I know what I’m going to find even as I look over my shoulder at the wall behind me, but still my heart pounds at the sight of the huge black Reduciata symbol.

This isn’t Benson’s prison, it was
mine
.

As soon as the realization washes over me it feels so obvious. To my right I can see the path of destruction I made during my escape. And though that wall has been made whole again, I’m pretty sure if I were to walk over and make it disappear I would find the open space the helicopter took off from.

I remember something from the previous night, and everything snaps into place. Daniel got nervous when he saw me hanging around here. He was worried I’d find this place. That’s why he sent me on my way!

He must know about it. Know that’s where we were held. Of course he knows—he’s spent the last three days convincing me that he knows
everything
that happens here. But . . . but it doesn’t make any sense. Why would they
pretend
I was in a Reduciata prison?

But in an instant I understand. Benson said they were going to test me.
This
was the test.
Creating
the sledgehammer didn’t work.
Creating
the bomb didn’t work. What finally got me out of there was when I
transformed
the prison bars and walls.

That perfectly timed rescue wasn’t timed.

It wasn’t a rescue.

It was a sign that I had passed.

The painting
. Now I know what was bothering me about it. The painting was waiting for me in our room when we arrived at the headquarters. But Benson said he arrived in a helicopter
after
us. That’s what was bugging me when I talked about the painting with Daniel. The painting shouldn’t have been able to make it to the headquarters ahead of us.

Unless someone could simply walk it down the hallway while we hovered pointlessly in the air.

I hate that I didn’t see it before. But even if I had, how could I jump from that to all
this
? But it’s proof that Daniel knew.

My whole body sags in despair as I stare around the destroyed cell. This changes everything.

Everything.

And yet . . .

I breathe in and out, trying to catch the tail of a stream of thought that’s making me nervous. Finally, as the adrenaline begins to settle, it solidifies in my head.

If it was all just a Curatoriate test, then why was Benson there? And Sunglasses Guy?

There were
actual
Reduciates there. There’s no way to fake that.

Is there?

I mean, I can change my face into my mom’s. Were they all in disguise? Was that
all
part of the test?

Except that the
Benson
who was there really was Benson. Inside and out.

Then is this all just a Reduciate facade? The whole Curatoria headquarters? Everything?

No, that’s not possible either. Because Alanna and Thomas are here. And I know they’re who they say they are because Benson knew Thomas instantly. And Thomas and Alanna knew about Sammi and Mark.

No, there are definitely Reduciates
and
Curatoriates involved here.

Somehow—in some form—the Reduciata and Curatoria are working together.