False Future (9 page)

“Exactly.” His gaze falls for a second.

“What is it?”

He makes a sound that could possibly be a laugh. “I was mad at you. For a really long time. I was mad you took off like that and got all sacrificial without giving any of us a say.”

“Peter, I’m—”

“No, listen. I’m not mad anymore. You being here reminds me of what matters.”

“And what is that?”

“Life,” he says.

He kisses me a final time, slowly, lingering, and then lifts his lips to kiss my forehead.

“Now go. We’ll see each other soon.”

Somehow I do it. I leave him behind. I don’t look back on my way out of his room, because I know he’ll be watching me, and if I look back I’ll
go
back.

I leave level twelve and go down to my dorm, and when I open the door I see a person I don’t recognize.

“M
-96!” he says, like we’re old friends.

He’s wearing our armor, but he is not a Rose.

“Yes,” I reply.

Everyone is staring at me in the doorway.

“Wonderful to meet you. My name is Albin.”

His hair is medium length and mouse brown, combed straight back. He’s smiling, and he’s got two dimples in his cheeks, and bright white teeth. His eyes are warm, a brown so light it’s honey, but bloodshot, like he’s been up all night drinking. The scales on his armor are the color of plums, and there aren’t any visible weapons on his person. His badge just has the letter
A
on it, no number.

“Hi, Albin.”

He hasn’t broken eye contact. My teammates are alternating looks between us. Something is very, very wrong.

“How can I help you?” I do my best to stand tall. Seeing Peter gave me new strength that I draw on right now.

“Oh, I’m very happy you said that,” he says. “You can help me a great deal, so it’s good you’re in a helpful mood.”

Rhys is standing behind everyone, but I can tell his chest is expanding and contracting faster than normal. He gives me a slight shake of his head—
Don’t blow our cover just yet.

Albin stares at me a beat too long, and then inhales quickly, like he just realized he should get on with it.

“Would you mind coming to a different level with me?” Albin holds his hand out, palm up, but he’s too far away for me to take it, so the gesture is weird.

“Sure,” I say stiffly. “Let’s go.”

I catch Rhys’s gaze one more time, briefly, and it seems like he’s about to step forward, but he’s smart enough to know that would guarantee both our deaths.

Albin passes me and steps out into the hallway.

My team is clearly unnerved.

“Good luck,” P-230 says.

I nod my thanks, then follow Albin out the door.

He’s waiting near the railing with that same big and beautiful smile.

“Hey, just relax,” he says. “No one’s in trouble.” When he talks, I can hear a bit of phlegm rattling in his lungs.
If he’s sick, maybe he’s weak.

“I’m relaxed, just not feeling well,” I say.

“Have you seen a doctor?” He sniffs.

I don’t want to see a doctor. I just shrug and hope he drops it. We enter the elevator, and in the enclosed space I can smell him. He smells like cinnamon. Not like cinnamon scent, but actual cinnamon from a jar, slightly bitter.

He faces straight ahead, waiting patiently, until the car stops on level three. I follow him out, then halfway around the perimeter to a door that doesn’t have a dorm label on it. Or any label. He pushes the door open and steps aside. “After you.”

It’s completely dark in the room, and every instinct says not to go in, but I can’t just stand here. I step through the doorway, listening hard for the presence of others, but it feels empty. There’s a slight plastic scent in the air.

Albin closes the door behind us and flicks on the light. I gasp at what I see. The room only holds a chair covered in thick chains. Adrenaline hits my bloodstream like a bomb. I whirl, but Albin backhands me across the face. It’s like getting hit with a shovel. My head cracks into the wall and I slide down to the floor.

My vision is blurred on the right side from his slap, but he isn’t taking advantage of my weakened state; he’s just standing in front of the exit with his arms folded, a neutral look on his face.

“Sorry about that,” he says. “Have a seat? I won’t tie you up.”

I get back on my feet and almost fall down. My head is throbbing, and I feel like my left side is heavier, like I’m going to tilt that way and crash into the wall again.
You should’ve stayed with Peter. No. You should’ve taken him and Rhys and just left this place behind.

“Take a second. And then please sit down.” He still hasn’t moved and his eyes have never left me.

The heat from his blow has cooled to dull pain radiating down my face. I work my jaw around to make sure it’s not broken. Then I sit down, mentally preparing myself to spring out of the chair if he takes a step closer. He doesn’t.

“Are you a Rose?” I say, trying hard not to wince. My cheek is already swelling, making it painful to talk.

“No. My role is slightly different.” He sniffles.

“Different how?”

“I can’t tell you that, but I promise you’ll know soon.”

I imagine Rhys up in his dorm, and Peter in his.
Get out of the Verge,
I think.
Just go.

“I know who you are, Miranda,” Albin says. He snorts back snot and then spits it in the corner. The ball of phlegm is bloody.

“Are you sick?” I say. “What’s wrong with you?” I make my tone prodding, trying to get a rise out of him.

“I know who you are,” he says again.

“Care to share? I’ve been trying to figure it out for a while.”

He laughs through his nose and somehow makes it sound delicate. “Humor. Very good. A fine reaction to danger. It’s a mechanism to deal with fear. Some people, specifically people who aren’t like us, usually choose panic. They shake. But you and fear are old friends, aren’t you?”

I’m not sure what response he’s looking for. Whatever it is, I want to give him the exact opposite. So I try one.

“That’s interesting,” I say.

“Mmm,” he replies. “The director is excited that you’re here, actually.”

My blood runs cold. How did she find out? A moment passes where I consider opening my comm so I can at least warn Rhys to get out. But Albin only took
me
when he could have easily taken us both, so maybe his cover is still intact.

Albin smiles. “Yes, she knows you’re here.”

“I don’t really give a shit.” But after a moment I can’t help myself. “Why is she excited?”

“That is my question to you. It appears I am uninformed about something. The director has a special interest in you, but no one can seem to tell me why. You aren’t even a rumor among the ranks right now—everyone still thinks you’re dead. Why is that?”

“No clue.”

He doesn’t say anything. I can tell he wants to sniffle again—his nose twitches, the nostrils inflamed—but he doesn’t.

“You’re sick,” I say again, thinking hard, trying to buy myself some time.

“Do you know why I’m sick, Miranda?” The coolness in his voice is melting. I can tell I’m annoying him. Good.

“You don’t get enough vitamin C?”

Albin lunges forward, stopping an inch from my face with both hands on the armrests, hovering over me. I keep staring right back into his eyes. I’m used to people trying to make me feel afraid.

“My sickness is why we’re here.” Fever radiates from his skin. I smell cinnamon again.

I wait, choosing not to speak.

He stands up straight, but keeps looking down at me. Something changes in his face. “I want you to understand something. True Earth is not evil. They are merely defending themselves. From you.”
They,
he said. Not
we
. But the way he says it—it sounds canned. Like he’s saying it for someone else’s benefit. Someone watching us, perhaps?

Suddenly it hits me.
Defending themselves.
Albin hasn’t been fully briefed. He doesn’t know we’re actually the past of True Earth, or True Earth is our future, however you want to put it. He still thinks True Earth is here to destroy us (or at least destroy us more than they’re currently planning to).

I decide not to let on what I know, for now.

He snorts again, then drags his scaled forearm under his nose. “And I’m sick because of this
planet
. A planet full of people who willingly destroy themselves. How many people—actual
citizens
of this world—would end it all if they could? If they could press a button and erase everything? A hundred? A thousand? Millions, maybe. What do you think?”

“I think you should tell me exactly what you want from me and stop trying to rationalize mass murder.” This isn’t an interrogation. He’s not asking me real questions. So what does he want?

Albin spits another glob of bloody phlegm on the floor. He closes his eyes. His eyelids flutter for a second, and then he fixes his stare on me once again. I have no idea what’s going on.

He closes his eyes again, and I decide to stop waiting around. I explode out of the chair, whip open the door, and then vault over the railing. I was on level three, so it hurts when my feet smack the ground. Sharp pain travels from my feet up through my hips. I tuck myself into a forward roll and come up by a group of startled Roses. I shove through them and keep running. I don’t want to leave Rhys or Peter behind, but our chances are better if we slip out separately.

No one shouts, no one follows. Outside it’s as cold as ever, and the snow is blowing sideways. There’s a Thorn twenty feet from the Verge, its driver’s side door open. Too good to be true, but I’m not about to question it. My body is pure action, but my mind keeps drifting to random memories, the kind of stuff you recall without trying to. I see Peter’s face, taste his mouth. I see the blood on Noah’s face. I remember his arms around me, real only in my mind, right before we both died.

Noah may not be in my head anymore, but I know what he’d say.
Don’t be afraid. And don’t you dare give up.

I’m not going to.

Then I’m inside the Thorn, tearing away from the Verge. The tires bite hard into the frozen ground. I run over a small tree like it’s a toothpick. It’s still all clear behind me, no pursuit. But I keep checking, because that can’t be right—Albin should’ve sounded the alarm by now.

I drive west toward the apartment. Ten seconds after I leave the park, I pull over and ditch the Thorn. They’ll be tracking it, no doubt. I get out, breathless from the adrenaline, and sprint the rest of the way, weaving up and down the streets, ignoring the citizens as they stare at me. My breath billows out in enormous clouds, the cold air stinging my throat. I go in through the parking garage, stepping over the chunks of concrete I made with my RAW, then take the elevator up. The warm air is a shock, almost painful on my skin. I hunch over, hands on my knees, and just breathe while the car rises. By the time it gets to the top, I’ve almost caught my breath. Noble will know what the best plan is to get Rhys and Peter out. He’ll know how to proceed. I’m almost smiling. I can’t believe I made it out of there that easily. Some security force they’ve got there.

I fling the door open to our apartment and call out, “Noble! Sophia! Where are you?”

No response. I check each room. “Noble?”

R-34 and M-96 are gone too.

“Guys…” I say, even though I know I’m alone. I feel sick.

I close my eyes.

When I open them, I’m back in the room with Albin, who is laughing his ass off.

A
lbin doesn’t stop laughing for a good twenty seconds. I almost think he’s faking it.

I’m still in the chair. The chains are around me now, pinning me in place, cutting off circulation to my hands. I’m too confused to even be upset, like I’m waiting numbly for someone to explain the joke. I look down at my hands and open and close them, then squeeze, feeling the pressure in my palms. Albin laughs until he coughs and has to spit more phlegm.

“Too easy, too easy,” he says.

I blink rapidly, then squeeze my eyes shut hard enough to make it hurt. When I open them, I’m still in the room. But how? It’s impossible. I can remember the prickly warmth of the elevator, the way my lungs and throat burned from the cold air outside. It was real. And yet I’m here. Did they somehow incapacitate me in the apartment, then bring me back?

“You still don’t get it,” Albin says. He’s calm again. “Hey, look, a cat!” He snaps his fingers. In the corner of the room there now sits a black cat. It stares at me, then begins to clean itself, licking a paw, then dragging it over its face. “Look,” Albin says, “now it’s gone.” He snaps his fingers again, and the cat disappears.

I finally understand.

“You asked me if I was a Rose. I’m not a Rose, and I don’t make people afraid. I make them see things. Anything I want. I made you see freedom. And where did you go? You went home.”

He coughs again, and blood flecks his lips. “I stood beside you in your mind, on your journey through the snow.” He wipes the blood away and leaves behind a smile. “Now I know where you live.”

He says other things after that, but I can’t hear him over the roaring in my ears. I’ve led the enemy to Sophia and Noble.
You didn’t know,
I would like to tell myself, but I
should
have known. It was too easy. The Thorn was waiting for me right outside the door, and no one chased me. I should have known.

“Don’t blame yourself,” he says. “Actually, do. Your friends are going to die. But you’re familiar with that, aren’t you?”

The roaring in my ears filters into a frequency I can understand, a signal I’m familiar with. Anger. “I’m going to kill you,” I say.

“Call for your boyfriend,” he says. “I know your Peter is here. I’m going to deal with him next. I’m going to make him see lots of things, I think. I’m going to make him see
you
, even after you’re dead. And then when he thinks…”

He trails off as the door opens.

The director walks into the room.

She stands in the doorway for several seconds. Golden-haired, golden-scaled, she looks nothing like me, even though we have the same face. She is ancient in a way I can’t explain. Sort of like how a vampire is old but looks young. She stares at me. Last time we came in contact, not counting our near miss on the street a few hours ago, she was trying to get her Torch back and I was planning to use it to destroy her army of eyeless. Which I did.

Yet here we are.

“Thank you, Albin,” the director says, without looking away from me.

“I live to serve,” Albin says, almost sarcastically but not quite. He leans in and whispers something in the director’s ear.

“I bet you never thought you’d see me again,” I say to her.

“Actually, I didn’t know who you were until a few days ago.”

Her words chill me, even though I’m not sure what she means. Of course she knew who I was. I was the wrench in her works; I ruined her entire plan.

She steps closer and leans over me, close enough for me to smell her shampoo. And then her hands are undoing my chains. I think about biting her nose or ear off, but that’s not going to get me out of here any faster. I try not to tremble. I try not to be afraid. Most of all, I try to gather some hope. But fail utterly.
We were just getting started,
I think.
I just got back. I just got to see Peter.
At least we had that final moment together. I picture his eyes, his lips, and the way his hands felt. I wear the memory like armor.

I don’t want him to find me. I want him to run.

Another Miranda walks into the room. This one is different, though, and I recognize her instantly. She also has my face, but her hair is styled in a black pixie cut. This is Nina,
the
Nina, the original who loaned her identity to become a mole inside our team. I killed her in the Oval Office before she could send an army of monsters to eat our world from the inside out. I know this is the real her like I know anything.

“Remember when you killed me?” Nina says. She’s smiling, giddy almost. “Revenge is sweet in any universe.”

Universe.
Does she know the truth about our worlds?

“Quiet, Nina,” the director says.

“I do remember when I killed you,” I say as the director stands me up. I don’t resist. What’s the point? “Though you begged for your life.” Nina did nothing of the sort, but I savor the reaction from her now. Her mouth actually falls open. She can’t know what actually happened to the Nina I fought and killed—she wasn’t there. “She must’ve been defective. I’m sure
you
would never beg.”

The director guides me out of the room almost gently before Nina can respond.

“You have the same bad haircut, though,” I say over my shoulder. “Interesting—” The director shoves me toward the railing and I grab on to it, but then her hands are on my legs and she’s heaving me over the edge. From three floors up.

I flip once and land on my heels first, then butt, then back. Terrible pain flares horizontally through my shoulders and down my arms, and I can’t breathe.
Bad pain,
I think. The kind of pain when you know you’re really hurt; the kind that makes you afraid in a primal way.

Two feet thunk down next to me, and I follow them up to the director’s face. She hovers over me, blotting out the light behind her.

“You’ve caused me a lot of trouble. So I have to punish you.” She grabs my arm and pulls me up before I can catch my breath. A few Roses on the ground floor have stopped to watch. Above, Albin and Nina are leaning over the railing, staring down at us. Nina is grinning maniacally. The fire in my shoulders settles into my lower back, but I’m standing, so it’s possible nothing is broken.

I finally get a decent breath, and the director actually supports me while I lean against her. She guides me out of the Verge, helping me as I limp along.

I cough and scratch out, “Where are we going?” then cough some more.

“I have to mold you now. You’ll see.”

I shove her off me, lose my balance, and almost fall to my knees. I recover, then stumble through the doors. The cold air hits me like a hammer.

“You can’t run,” she says calmly. “Not until I tell you something.”

“Reveal your evil plan?” I say, coughing some more and tasting blood in my throat. My right eye is still blurry from Albin’s strike.

You’re in bad shape, North,
I think in a calm way that scares me.

I’m too calm. Like I’m already accepting whatever comes next. Which is a cousin to giving up. “You should know that’s always the villain’s downfall,” I continue.

“It’s funny you use the word
villain
,” she says. “I wouldn’t use that word.”

I feel a deep, low thrum in my bones as the laser on top of the Verge fires into the sky again. The heat of it warms my neck. The laser drills a hole through the clouds, but I can’t see what it strikes.

Then the director is on me, grabbing my arm and wrist for better leverage. Once again I let her.

“Tell me,” I say. “Get it over with.”

“First I have to show you something.” We move through a line of leafless trees and enter a clearing, with the skyline visible in the gray distance. I begin to shiver, taking care not to look at the Time Warner Center, like that might give Noble and Sophia away. To the south, a phalanx of Axes hovers over the buildings. Silently I urge the director to keep moving farther from the Verge, away from Peter and Rhys.

I know your Peter is here,
Albin said. Once Peter finds out what happened to me, he’ll get out. He has to. Others are depending on him.

I can see where the Axes are moving now. Roses push through the trees. They circle around us in groups of five, but stay a respectful distance away. All the armor colors are represented. Albin is here too, lips stained with blood from his sickness. There have to be a hundred Roses out here now, all standing solid against the icy wind. I search for my Peter and Rhys among the faces, but they all look the same.

The director leans in close. “Olivia told me who you are. As she told me who I am. Olivia tampered with my memories, and it almost ruined everything. Actually, it did ruin everything. But how can I hate the friend I’ve had for a thousand years?” She turns her face up to the sky. “Besides…now we’re here to fix it.”

I’m shivering even harder. I’m sick of not understanding. I’m sick of all these layers.

“I forgive you for what you’ve done, Miranda, because you haven’t learned yet. You have a long way to go. But it will happen. I know this because I exist.” Her hot breath leaves my ear, and I almost miss it. She peers into my face, looking for some kind of understanding. I have nothing to show her.

“Just kill me,” I say.

“You’ll get smarter too,” she says, squeezing my shoulder. “I’m not going to kill you. Because you’re me.”

That’s when the Axes open fire. Each Ax gives off a tiny burst of light, and in the next second, the base of the Time Warner Center explodes.