Follow Me Through Darkness (24 page)

“Take a shower, Neely,” he says. It’s almost a whisper. He closes the door and leaves me with the water and the steam
.

I stare at myself in the mirror until the steam deforms my face. I slowly get under the water, and it takes everything I have not to scream. Tears push out of my eyes, mingling with the water around me. By the time I make it out of the shower, damp and shaky from crying until I had no tears left, I go to Xenith’s bedroom. I want to apologize or make it better. I was wrong for kissing him
.

But Xenith is already asleep
.

DEADLINE: 17D, 23H, 58M

OLD COMPOUND: PHOENIX, ARIZONA

THORNE’S BEEN ASLEEP
for twenty minutes. I should sleep. I should be asleep. My brain won’t shut off. All the possibilities, the worst cases, play on repeat. I have to tell him everything, and I don’t know what will happen.

I want to curl up in his arms and lie there. Time can pass us by. I wish I could let it.

I turn over and watch Thorne sleep. Listen to him breathe, peaceful.

I force my eyes shut. I just need to sleep, so I count sheep. One. Two. Three jump over the fence. Four goes to meet them. Five. Six. Seven…

DEADLINE: 17D, 22H, 30M

OLD COMPOUND: PHOENIX, ARIZONA

THE DOOR BURSTS OPEN.

I scramble up in bed, Thorne next to me. Light shines in from outside, pouring over my face and in my eyes. A shadow stands there. Even from the outline, I know it’s my father.

“I warned you,” he says.

The sheets gather around us as Thorne’s arms wrap around me. I cling to him so tightly I’ll never let go. My father steps closer, into the darkness, and I can see him now more clearly. He has that look on his face, the one that says he’s in control. It’s evil with a twisted smile, and when I look into his eyes, they are empty, cold.

“We found you,” a deep voice booms from the doorway.

My eyes shoot back to the door, and three figures stand there. I can only see their silhouettes-no faces, no eyes. The Elders have come.

“We will not be disobeyed,” the second figure adds. That voice is high-pitched, but there’s a power in the way he speaks.

“We will take what is ours,” the third adds in a breathy, scratchy voice. I can’t see their faces, but I don’t need to. Fear passes through Thorne, strangling me, and the Elders move. Troopers pour into the room and rip Thorne out of the bed.

“Don’t take him,” I yell. I dig my hands into his skin, but the Troopers are stronger. I yell over and over, but no one’s listening to me. No one is listening.

“Neely,” Thorne yells as the Troopers pull him out of my sight.

I scream and run toward my father. “Please bring him back! Don’t do this!”

He doesn’t respond. He can’t respond. The Elders move in the sunlight.

“Take her,” one of them says.

My father latches on to me, and the Troopers close in around me.

“Neely!” Thorne yells. I sit up in bed. A dream. It was just a dream. He’s beside me, looking at me, his hands on my face, and I wrap mine around his forearm. The fire courses between us. I take a deep breath to calm myself.

“It was a dream,” he says, wrapping me in his arms. “Just a dream. It’s over.”

It’s over.

Except it’s not.

If they found us, it would be so much worse than that.

DEADLINE: 17D, 21H, 54M

OLD COMPOUND: PHOENIX, ARIZONA

I CAN ALMOST MAKE OUT
the small patterns on the walls. Maybe they’re more of a memory from my own life. I stare at them until my eyes get blurred and then look back at my watch. 3:06 AM.

There’s never enough time. It moves too quickly, signaling the end of everything. The end is the thing I fear the most. Eventually, though, all things end. Days. Nights. Life. Even love. The fear of this loss is greater sometimes than the truth. Thorne lies here beside me, breathing, his arm resting over me. That truth is undeniable. Everything else falls apart, life slips away, and still Thorne is here. Safe. I cling to that truth as much as I can.

The truth. They can still find me-they will-and on that day, time will be quick and slow at once. Time will be my enemy. My captor. My peace. My end. If it doesn’t find me, then death will. But I will fight the whole way. I will fight until I can’t anymore.

3:07 AM. Another minute wasted. We should be moving, not sleeping. I know that too well. The dream plays on in my mind. Any second the Elders will catch up to us, and if they don’t and we succeed, then what? What happens?

“Hey,” Thorne whispers. His arm shifts off my chest and toward my neck. His finger runs down my face, groggy, sloppy, still asleep. “Why are you awake again?” His voice is rough, still exhausted. I’m exhausted, too.

“Can’t sleep.”

He smiles at me, his eyes glossy and his smile weakened by the daze of waking, but still beautiful. Still perfect. “I’ll get up,” he says with a pause. “We can go.”

His leg moves away from mine, and I reach out for him. He should rest. Even in the darkness, I can see the white pallor of his skin, the circles under his eyes. We need to stay. He’s more tired than I am.

“Go to sleep,” I tell him.

His leg brushes mine again, and my heart pumps louder. Of course it did. It always does. Always will. Our hearts are the same. I’ve forgotten that lately. I’ve been so caught up in everything else, in the questions and the lies, that I forgot the truth of him.

“I love you,” Thorne whispers. His hand is focused this time, angled directly to caress my cheek. I grasp his in mine and smile. I don’t want to smile. I want to pout, to cry, to worry, yet I can’t help but feel happiness in this despair. And he is the reason. It’s selfish and I know that with every fiber of my being, but I can’t change it.

“I love you,” I say, lowering his hand to the empty space on the bed between us. His movement is quick, and his lips are on mine before I realize his intentions. I cave under the heat of the kiss, of his lips on mine, on the sparks that ignite something deep within us both. Whatever exhaustion I saw in his eyes before is replaced with desire, for me, for us. I see the hungry glimmer when his dark eyes peer over at me. I touch his cheek, kiss his jaw, and shake my head. He sighs heavily and joins our fingers together.

“I’m with you,” I say.

But for how long? The closer we get to the Mavericks, the harder everything feels. I hope I’m strong enough to stop it. Thorne’s hand falls limp in mine, and I know he is asleep again.

I lay my head back against the pillow, and now my arm is crossed over my body in an awkward twist. I won’t let go of his hand-I won’t, even if it hurts.

21 DAYS BEFORE ESCAPE

IT HURTS TO THINK THAT
I’m going to be dead in eight days. That I have eight days left to walk on the beach, to stare at the only picture of my mother, to spend with Thorne. How does that even happen? Didn’t I walk into his quarters yesterday? Where does the time go? I don’t know what waits out there, and part of me doesn’t want to. I fear the end of this place, even as I long for it
.

“Cornelia,” my father yells, opening the door
.

I roll my eyes and cram the picture of my mother under my pillow. His thinning hair has wings from where his hands were undoubtedly running through it. I don’t say anything to him, and we both freeze in an awkward stillness. I wait for him to speak, to be himself again. I’d give anything for that
.

“What was that?” He looks tired. The lines on his forehead have deepened, and there are circles under his eyes. What else are the Elders making my father do? It seems to be taking a toll on him
.

“Nothing,” I say. I evade his gaze and look around the room, playing it off. He doesn’t buy it. He moves toward the bed and pushes me out of the way. I fight his hand, try to keep it from stealing my only memory, but he wins. He pulls up my pillow and, with it, the picture of my mother. I cry out, and he looks from her to me
.

“Where did you get this?” I don’t respond. He grabs my chin in his hand and forces me to look at him. “Did you take this from my office?”

I don’t answer again. He lets go of my face, and I lose my balance. “The boy?”

“His name is Thorne, but I didn’t get it from him.” I did get it from Thorne, but I’m not going to tell him that. I got it two years ago as a birthday present. He traded Xenith for it. I never asked what it cost him, and he never would’ve told me. “Give it back to me.” I hold out my hand like the disobedient child I am. “Now.”

My father’s face is expressionless. He looks at the picture once more and holds it in the air between us, ready to hand it over
.

But he doesn’t
.

He rips it down the center, through my mother’s smile. He rips across her deep green eyes and shreds her red hair into strips. He rips it until it’s nothing but confetti, and then he throws it in the air. I lunge at him
.

My hands are pulling, punching, gripping onto any part of him I can touch. He’s holding me back, but not successfully. Blood fills the space under my fingernails
.

This is not my father; this is only a monster
.

He hurls me to the floor. My chest is heaving and my face is flushed, but my father stands there and bleeds on my carpet. He smiles, too. One of those devious smiles that make my stomach jump to my throat
.

“That, little girl, was a mistake you will pay dearly for,” he says
.

“You can’t hurt me.”

He squats down to me. His cheek is bright red, three marks down it. My marks. They look less human and more animal
.

“I can do everything to hurt you,” he says. “Don’t you see that?”

I shake my head. “You won’t.”

“Why won’t I?”

“I’m your daughter. If the people see you hurt your own daughter, they’ll never trust your lies. They’ll start to question you.” I lean toward him, and even though I know it’s impossible that they’ll question him, I can play the cards anyway. My father doesn’t know that I know everything. “You don’t want them to ask questions, do you, Father? To doubt you or the Elders or this place?”

He meets my gaze before he stands. He looks in my mirror and wipes the blood from his cheek with his hand. “Cornelia, you’re wrong. That would never happen.” His voice is soft and smooth, less like an evil tyrant and more like a person talking to a baby. No piece of my father remains. This man is something else entirely. The way he’s looking at me, I know I’ve made a mistake.

“And if it threatened to, I now have an example.”

Me
.

DEADLINE: 17D, 16H, 48M

OLD COMPOUND: PHOENIX, ARIZONA

THORNE WAKES ME UP
with a kiss on my cheek and a spread of breakfast in front of me. It takes me a second to pry my eyes open, but when I see it, I realize I’m hungry. I’ve gotten used to eating less, but the plate of dried berries and vegetables, of nuts and grains that’d we found before make my stomach growl.

“What is that?” I ask, pointing to the other substance. The jar we took from the market outside is in his hand, and the yellow, half-liquid, half-solid forms inside are familiar to me.

“Peaches,” Thorne says. His smile is half-cocked on his mouth. “They’re not bad.”

I sit up so he can sit beside me on the bed, and together we eat. It’s the most normal thing we’ve done since we’ve been outside, aside from sitting in an abandoned replica of the Compound while we do it. I sigh and let all the other pressures fade away, until Thorne breaks the moment into pieces.

“You had another dream last night. What was it about?”

I push the peaches back toward him and wrap a thread from the blanket on the bed around my fingertip. “My father and the Elders.” He stiffens beside me, exhales. “They found us here.”

“You’re hundreds of miles away from them,” he says. His words aren’t as comforting as I want them to be or as he means them to be. We both know distance won’t stop the Elders, even if we aren’t saying it. Benny had no problem saying it, and Cecily had no problem with the fact that the Elders know exactly where we are right now. Maybe the Remnants are better with the truth than we are.

Thorne moves from the bed and puts the lid on the remaining peaches. He stretches his arms over his head as he sets the food on the dresser. I look away. Sunlight explodes into the room through the windows, bright and warm.

“We should go,” I say.

I stand up, and Thorne’s in front of me, hands on my hips, holding me in place. “I just wanted to say one thing,” he says, then pauses and lowers his forehead to mine. A breath, a nervousness, flows through our branding. “I get it.”

“You get what?” I ask.

“Xenith,” he says. “I know you used to believe in us, and then one day you didn’t anymore. One day you had all these doubts. I felt them, and I never mentioned it because it didn’t matter. I believed enough for both of us.”

“Thorne-” I start.

“Let me get this out, okay?”

I nod softly, and Thorne exhales. “I get that he knows things, and I guess you could talk to him about all the things you’d spent your life dreaming of, wishing for, and though you didn’t feel you could come to me for some reason-”