A Vault of Sins (21 page)

The boys keep kicking. They drift back and forth.

“I let it happen, Evalyn, but it wasn’t my fault. Once, those distinctions were impossible to make. But I forced myself to make them, because that was the only way I could kill them.”

I find it. The image of her crime unfolds in my head. The three swinging bodies turn into three empty nooses that unravel before us when I imagine a world where Valerie wouldn’t have felt the need to end their lives. Where Veda could party and not have to worry.

It’s unorthodox. I’m not reimagining the illusion at hand, but it works. Soon, the nooses evaporate to nothing.

She begins to hyperventilate. I notice the first rapid movements of her chest. The way her body rises and falls must be ripping apart her forming scabs. I rest my hand against her chest.

She rolls over and releases a wretched cough. When she opens her hand, it’s covered in yellow phlegm laced in blood.

“What’s wrong with you?” She can’t be suffering from the inside so quickly. Panic clutches my throat.

“The illusions may not kill me, but they’re finding other ways to.”

Brush rustles to my left and I snap to attention, scanning the forest.

“What is it?”

“We’re not alone.” I nod to the woman who’s watching us. She’s fair with jet-black hair, disheveled and filthy. A gash decorates her eyebrow, dry blood plastered to the side of her face.

“Gia.” Valerie whispers.

“She’s an arsonist.” I remember studying her.

“Goddamnit.” Valerie’s head falls back. “I’m sick of fire people.”

I’m sick of any people. If Gia’s at all like Mitch and Priscilla, we’re so fucked. She doesn’t seem threatening—at least, not yet. She approaches us coyly, her eyes big and glued to Valerie’s back, like she’s enthralled with the burns. She licks her lower lip slowly, and her eyes dart to me. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Can I help you?” Valerie sneers. I’d smack her if she wasn’t already so messed up.

Gia says nothing, dropping to her knees a few feet from us. She unzips her back and hands me a roll of gauze—a
huge
roll of gauze. Only then do I notice the spidering scars on her hand. They lace up her arm. “You need to keep her dry. The burns are swelling. They look really irritated.”

“Well, Evalyn ripped my T-shirt from them and then we went tromping through the forest. They
are
irritated.”

She clucks her tongue and shakes her head. “Shouldn’t have done that.” There’s something a little off about her. Okay,
really
off. She frowns at the gauze she just gave me, and then reaches out for it again. “May I?”

I hand it to her. Valerie shoots me a panicked look. Gia crawls closer to us and begins to bandage up Valerie’s torso with the gauze, humming softly as she does so.

“It doesn’t hurt so much anymore,” says Val.

“That’s because all your skin got cooked right up. It’s better if it does hurt.”

“That’s nice. Real nice.”

“A burn this deep you’re not supposed to mess with too much until you get medical attention. But I guess the rules are different here.” She flattens the end of the gauze down. “Or maybe not. Maybe they just want to make you hurt. You have been quite bad.”

“Thanks.” Valerie and I utter the word at the same time.

“You’re not going to die,” she says matter-of-factly, tapping at her head. “I know things.” Then she stands up and flings her backpack over her shoulder, wiping her hands on her pants. She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something more, but doesn’t, biting her lip and skipping away.

“Gia.”

She looks over her shoulder.

“Where are you going?”

“Wherever I want to,” she says. “Wherever I want to.” She spins around and cups her hands in front of her. “They left us little presents in the woods.”

I shake my head. “You don’t want to find your present.”

“I do, Evalyn. I’m tired and hungry. They won’t let me leave.” She smiles dreamily. “So it’s time to sleep.”

“O-okay?”

She waves good-bye and skips through the woods.

“What a whacko,” says Valerie.

“Yeah, but she’s right.”

Valerie frowns.

“We’ll die before they let us out. So get up.” The woods may have made Gia crazy, or maybe she was crazy before. I can’t be as accepting of dying from an illusion as she is. I’ve always fought, and I’ll fight now.

“What?
”

“I said get up. We have to move.”

“Why?” Sweat drips down her face. “There’s nothing to run to, Evalyn. We’re trapped here for a month.” Her body is losing control with every passing second, but her eyes gain fire.

I lean in close to her. When my lips are right up against her ear, I whisper, in the faintest voice possible, “No, we’re not.”

A quarter of a mile from the creek, Valerie puts all of her weight on me. Half a mile later, I’m practically dragging her.

My body screams for me to give up.

“Drop me,” she begs. “I’m slowing you down. It won’t matter if I’m with you or not, I’ll still end up dying if you’re walking this goddamn slow.”

“Shut up.”

Her feet give out, on purpose, no doubt.

“Get on your feet.”

“Why?” she asks in small voice, a voice that sounds so unlike Valerie.

“Because we need to run.” I crane my neck, my eyes connecting with the strange, unwavering sky. Praying to the engineers. Waiting for the engineers. Now, I will defy them.

Valerie flips her body over and begins to crawl toward me. When she attempts to lift herself to her feet, she stumbles into me. I catch her the moment she releases a long shudder.

“My eyes. . . .” She shakes her head back and forth. “Everything is blurring together.”

I see the barrier looming before us. Almost there. If everything goes according to plan, a part of my team will be waiting on the other end to extract us.

When we make it to the wall, I press her up against it. She fights for breath, her eyes clouded, unfocused.

I might be too late.

“You’re everything to me. You know that, right?” I try not to break in front of her when the realization of what I’m doing hits me. The biggest decision rests in the wall behind me. A decision that might cut my life drastically short. Retribution. Everything falls in the way of retribution.

They tried to kill behind closed doors, even though we were beating their machine.

Who else is this going to happen to? I am the only one who can keep them from playing dirty.

She snaps to her senses, stilling herself long enough to ask, “Why are you crying?”

“Don’t ever forget it. Don’t ever forget how much you mean to me. I don’t care how evil you are. You or Casey.”

Casey.

I bite down hard on my lower lip to keep from sobbing. “I love you.”

Her hands tighten around my forearms, filthy nails sinking into my flesh.

“No.” It’s a bold word for such a weak girl. “No.”

Why is she saying this? Does she understand what’s about to happen?

Normally, Valerie would have the strength to take me with her. A blessing of her delirium, but only if it doesn’t kill her.

“Listen to me.” I attempt to keep her clawing hands still for a moment, distracted as the wall around us begins to ripple and shift. Wes.

Slowly, the wall parts like a vertical Red Sea.

“You hide somewhere where they will never find you. You leave all of this behind, you hear me?”

I haven’t seen her look this way since Jace died. The defeat, the desperation. “I need you.”

The wall has parted. Two young men dressed in black race to us, headlights from a vehicle blaring behind them. It is nighttime in the real world.

“She needs a doctor!” I cry. Wes’s arms latch around Valerie’s waist.

He looks at me questioningly. “Evalyn?”

“Take her,” I say. “Go! Before you’re compromised.”

He furrows his eyebrows, like he has no idea why I would do this to myself. I don’t even know why I’m doing this to myself.

“GO!”

When Wes pulls Valerie away, she tears at the skin on my arm, fighting with every ounce of strength she has left in her. “Evalyn . . . EVALYN!” She wails like I’m already dead, her fingers sliding from mine.

“YOU CAN’T LET HER DO THIS!” Thrashing against Wes, she shrieks, “STOP,
STOP
!”

The wall folds in on itself. The note of her scream ceases as the metal glues itself back together, and I’m left with my own hollow gasps.

“I’m sorry,” I say to no one and everyone all at once. To Meghan and Liam and Tanner and Jace. Valerie and Casey. Sorry I couldn’t be the flawless hero.

I’m sorry that nothing goes according to plan.

“Oh God.” Panic swells in me. I allow it to take charge as I slide down the wall, sobbing into my knees.
You can do this, Evalyn. You can be brave for all of them. You must.

When I glance up, a boy stands a couple hundred feet away, staring at me with a slack jaw. I recognize him as Ryan McCadden. I can’t remember what he did. My mind, the plan that was supposed to be rock solid . . . it’s all crumbling before me.

I crack.

“Please.” My cheeks are so saturated with tears and snot that I must look like a terrified child. “Just go away.” I’m too defeated to shout any louder.

To my surprise, he widens his brown eyes and backs away slowly. Then he turns on his heel and runs. I don’t remember who he is other than a name. I don’t know what he’s done. If he’ll make it out alive.

I drop my head, allowing my lungs to fill with and expel the faux mountain air for a series of seconds.

“Time’s up,” I say out loud. “Move.”

The command makes the entire situation real, fueling my adrenaline, numbing the pain of my burns and stab wound.

Once on my feet, I push myself into a run.

I’ve been at the end before. The end, where no foreseeable future is in sight.

Every time, I think to myself, what would it be like to just stop existing?

This is how I felt when Nick gave me the gun. And after Jace died, as I wandered desperately through a green forest in attempt to find Casey.

Now, the future is clear. I see the path laid out before me, the cut I must make through the woods to make it to the Vault. The center of the prison.

Keep running.

I hurtle over a log.

I hurry to the creek, which is when I run out of breath. One minute, I tell myself, slowing to a halt and placing my hands on my knees.

“Princess.”

Oh God. Not now.

I pull myself up and turn around. Mitch leans against a tree. In one hand he holds a knife. He flicks his wrist up and lets it fall into his open palm with a
pat
.

Pat. Pat.

His wicked glint is flat. Like Priscilla’s, and the villains I’ve faced before. The villains who are all dead.

“Where’s your girlfriend?”

He frowns and shrugs. Without hesitance, he says, “Girlfriend’s dead. One of her ex’s came back and slit her throat. Good riddance.”

I begin to back away slowly. “How could you just say that?”

“Priscilla isn’t what’s on the table right now,” he spits violently. “
You
are. You see, those engineers brought my Uncle Tim back from the dead. He only ever had anything to say to me when he wanted me to fight for what’s mine. Now, he wants me to fight for my life.”

I need to run, but I can’t turn my back on him.

“But he didn’t really come back from the dead, did he?” He points to his head as he advances. “He was an image they put in the woods. They made him seem real. They used him to tell me that you need to die. Uncle Tim said that if I did it, they’d let me out of here. They’d release me.”

My back collides with a tree, and I slowly scoot around it, keeping my eyes trained on Mitch. “That’s what they do,” I try to explain in the most convincing manner possible. “They feed you lies to watch you kill in order to save yourself. Then they take you out.”

He grins, and shakes his head. “I don’t think so, princess.”

I know as well as he does that the knife he’s holding isn’t going to disintegrate, just like the branch didn’t.

I slide my hands over my pockets, but all of my knives are back at the campsite.

There’s only one other option.

He’s fast. I know from the moment I turn away that he’s going to take me down, and I don’t even have time to think about manipulating the nanotech. His arms wrap around me, knife penetrating my side as we slide to the ground.

I have one sliver of a window when he’s distracted. Rolling from underneath him, I sit up in a crouch, pressing my hand to my soaking wet T-shirt. My side.

Blood.

Control this
.

I don’t have time to toy with the idea. As Mitch stumbles to his feet, crimson-slick knife in his hand, I find the earth and make it mine.

Beneath his right foot, the ground rips apart.

Close it up.

The ground eats his foot, and Mitch stares down in horror. Up to his knees in the dirt, he drops the knife and grips his knee with both hands, attempting to rip it out.

My chance.

I leave him, my hand keeping the blood trapped inside me, my breath thick in my throat. He screams for me to come back. Selfish pig.

I stumble through the brush. The hill rises before me. Blood squelches between my fingers. I begin to grow dizzy. I don’t know if it’s from the wound.

The hill. I cry in relief. It must be three miles to the wall from here. This hill is in the center of the Compass Room. This hill hides the Vault.

I have to make it to the top.

Halfway up, I wonder if Mitch is going to eventually pull his leg out and come find me. I know he will. I sink to my knees. My shirt is soaked. The top of my pants is soaked. I wonder how much I’ve already lost. Half a pint, maybe? More?

Around the outside of my vision, the world grows fuzzy. I growl and push myself to my feet. If I don’t finish this, my sacrifice will be for nothing. I begin to climb, grasping onto roots, pulling myself upward.

The pain slams into me at full force. The heat of the burns return, and it feels like someone is taking a knife to my side and ripping it open even wider. I lick the sweat beneath my lower lip and grit my teeth, groaning with every step, sobbing as my fingernails dig into the dirt. The dizziness has almost taken me completely when I reach the top.

With red, trembling fingers, I try to apply as much pressure as I can to the knife wound. I sit for minutes, maybe hours—the universe feels upside-down, capsized. I’m drifting underwater. I’m melting in a pool of warmth.

Snapping awake, I glance to my left and my right. No one chasing me. No illusions. The sun is about to set. It will be night soon, and the cold will come.

I feel myself slipping. My will. The ground beneath me. Slipping and dissolving into nothing.

I’m going to die. After everything I’ve put myself through. After trying to be a hero, I’m going to die with nothing.

Some people aren’t supposed to rise to the top.

“No,” I say. From the Compass Room feeds, it must look like I am going insane, talking to myself like this. But my head is spinning so quickly that I can’t even keep my thoughts anchored. I have to speak them.

“This isn’t how I’m going out.”

The Vault is beneath you
.

“I know. I know it is.”

You can move the earth.

“Nothing can survive in the Vault.”

You’re going to die anyway.

The one thing about a safe—about an unhackable threshold of information—is that there are no backups.

The Vault is so pure, so easily destroyed.

All of that research
.

If I can’t steal it, I can take it out. That precious data. Gemma’s print is stuck to my thumb and her eyes rest right on top of mine, but I won’t need them. I’m not following protocol for entering the Vault. I’m hacking it. I’m destroying it.

I fold my arms across my chest. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three.” I sense the threads of the earth beneath me, woven together and holding me on top of this mountain.

Beneath me, the hill rips apart. I fall back into darkness.