Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3) (16 page)

All the lies and betrayals come flooding back with agonizing clarity. I curse at myself for forgetting what he did to me, not just once but twice now. I feel stupid and angry and sad all at the same time, the hurt in my heart just as fresh again as it was the first time I discovered what kind of man he really is.

The white room vanishes, and suddenly I’m strapped to the bed in Dr. Pierce’s lab again, thrown back into this memory that Infinity is forcing me to relive. Just like before, I see Jonah walk forward from the doorway and approach the bed, and I suddenly remember what came next. Jonah was telling the truth. I really did attack him and choke him to the ground. He tried to confront me about it afterward in front of everyone, but I didn’t believe him. Now it’s replaying in my mind all over again, as the me from the past roars with anger, breaks from the restraints, and pounces at Jonah. Time slows to a painful crawl as I fly through the air with my fingers clawing toward his neck.

I feel so ashamed of my past self for such a cowardly attack. I remember how much I wanted to kill him, but even though he betrayed me, he didn’t deserve to die. What was I thinking? Was I so blinded by anger that I forgot who I was? I would never murder anyone, so I don’t understand why I would suddenly want to kill the man who raised me, even if he—suddenly I sense it, a writhing undercurrent of single-minded brutality mingling with my own spirit, burning and twisting around my soul like a swirling tornado of fire, revealing the true source of hatred.

I should’ve known. The sadness I felt in that moment was mine, but the murderous rage was all Infinity’s. It feels as if our personalities were locked inside the same frame, like the shards in the mosaic of this memory. I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt as I see my hands, controlled by Infinity’s lethal intentions, reach toward Jonah. I remember the expression of absolute bewilderment on his face, and that’s exactly what I dread to see again as I look beyond my outstretched fingertips that are trembling with rage and completely beyond my control. But it isn’t Jonah that I see staring back at me. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but the memory has been altered. Jonah has been replaced, and instead all I see are my own clawed hands diving directly at my own startled face.

Time snaps into full speed as Infinity erupts out of the mosaic, shattering the memory completely apart in a burst of flying fragments. She slams into me, wrapping her hands tightly around my throat as we both tumble backward, through the opening of my eyes, and out of this mad, twisted mindscape of horrors and back into the dimly lit concrete corridor of the real world.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The concrete floor is cold against my back, the solitary moth is still circling the light above me, and I’m lying in exactly the same prone position that I’ve been in for the last twenty-five minutes. The shock of reliving the brutal attack on Jonah and Infinity’s surprise assault has left me panting quick, adrenalized breaths, my rapidly rising and falling chest the only movement my paralyzed body will allow. Even the muscles that move my eyes have been rendered useless, but that doesn’t stop me from scanning my peripheral vision for any movement. Infinity is nowhere to be seen. Somehow she managed to breach the wall of memories and force me back out into the real world, but now I can’t even feel or sense her at all.

I try to take in slow and measured lungfuls of air to calm myself down and assess the situation, but the process is abruptly interrupted by a rising sense of panic when I feel something beginning to move inside me. It’s growing in the center of me, like a swelling tumor. I can feel the edges of it in visceral detail as it sprouts tendrils from its corners and a bulb from one end, molding itself into a miniature humanlike shape.

Infinity is inside me. Spreading like the poison that paralyzed me.

The doll-size mass is getting bigger and bigger, and it isn’t long before I sense Infinity trying to worm her phantom arms and legs inside mine, squirming her way into my skin so she can wear me like a suit. I want to fight back, but I’m not sure how to.

I try to imagine her shrinking smaller again, and suddenly the enemy limbs creeping inside my own seem to retract ever so slightly. It isn’t much, but it’s a start, so I take as deep a breath as I can and begin focusing harder on resisting Infinity’s power. It’s working; I can feel her influence waning as the tips of her snaking tendrils shrivel back toward where they came from. I’m winning, and I’ve almost forced her all the way out, when all of a sudden her venomous voice echoes in my skull.

“I’m not the only one who wanted to kill Major Brogan,”
she whispers tauntingly.
“You wanted it just as much as I did.”

That . . . isn’t . . . true,
I reply in my mind.

“I’m not lying,”
she says.
“Let me help you look deeper, Finn.”

I try to block her out, but a tortured moan escapes my lips as images begin pulsing through my mind. I see Jonah sitting at my bedside, reading me a picture book, smiling at me with genuine love. I see the desperate worry in his eyes as he’s reduced to a flustered, bumbling mess when I break my arm falling from my bike. I see him grinning like a goofy idiot as I blow out the candles on the cake at my fourth birthday party, and I feel the warm embrace of his huge arms when I cry because I have no friends to play with. I see Jonah kneeling beside me, draping his jacket over my shoulders as the memory of his voice drifts on a warm current through my mind.

“I love you like you are my daughter. No matter what happens, never, ever forget that.”

And I vowed that I never would. He was
my
Jonah, and I loved him, too; part of me still does, and that’s why it hurts so much when all my fond memories are tainted by the bad, and all the joy that I used to cherish is now crushed by the sight of his pleading face, flushed red with blood, his eyes bulging while he gags for breath as my hands choke him to the ground.

“You wanted that, too,”
whispers Infinity.

A feeble sob escapes my lips, and remorse ripples through me as the guilt of the attack and the pain of his betrayal fill my heart once more. Tears roll warm down the sides of my face, and my resistance falters, only for an instant, but it seems that’s all Infinity needs, as she suddenly expands to full size, filling my body completely. This is why she tried so hard to show me these things; she took a chance and gambled that the shame I felt would be my weakness and my weakness would give her the edge to take control.

Damn her to hell. She was right.

I know that I’m stronger than her, but she’s fired an arrow through a chink in my armor. I feel myself losing my grip and tipping backward into the void as Infinity shunts me into the darkness. I can feel her regaining command over my body as I drift away in a tangle of black. It’s like I’m surrounded by a mass of invisible ropes, and it feels as though Infinity’s spirit is swelling, pushing me further and further into oblivion, and I’m helpless to stop it.

I claw at the ghostly tendrils, desperately scrambling for a hold. They’re slippery and thick, but I manage to wrap my arms around one and slide to a slow stop, thankfully, for now, halting my descent into the dark. I look ahead, and I can see through Infinity’s eyes like peepholes cut into the void. The dim light from the corridor is shining in through them, and as I watch that little moth dancing around the lamp on the ceiling, I can’t help thinking that it’s just like me. Trapped, flying in endless circles until someone cuts the power. Right now Infinity has that power, and I need to find a way to sever it once and for all. I can feel her self-satisfaction, how pleased she is with her victory, but this body is still paralyzed, and I have half an hour to get it back.

“That’s . . . what . . . you . . . think,” says Infinity’s voice, but it isn’t spoken with her thoughts like before. The words came from her
mouth
; I could hear them through her ears, just like I can see the outside world through her eyes, and even though I’m not in control, I could feel her vocal cords vibrating and her lips moving as she spoke. But . . . how can that be? Dr. Pierce said it would be at least an hour until the toxins wore off, and only half that time has passed.

I hear a groan, and the outside view shifts as Infinity inexplicably raises her head. What’s happening? How is she doing this? I see her lifting her arm. The fingers of her open hand tremble before her eyes, but she’s
actually
able to move them. Infinity clenches her fist, and I see tiny drops of green liquid oozing from the pores and beading on her skin like emerald-tinted sweat. Incredibly, it seems that somehow she’s physically forcing the poison from our body.

“I’ve trained all my life, developing techniques that you have no understanding of,” Infinity says out loud, clearly addressing me. “This body listens to me, Finn, and that’s exactly why you don’t deserve it,” she mutters ominously. Infinity slowly sits up. The radio on her chest clatters onto the ground beside her, and seconds later it crackles to life with Bit’s voice.

“We’re inside the dome. It’s dark in here, Finn,” she says, her words ringing with the echo that comes from speaking in a cavernous space.

“Pass me your light, girly,” Dr. Pierce says in the background.

“Gotta go, Finn,” says Bit. “I’ll report back when we’re at the wreckage.”

Infinity shakily gets to her feet, picks the radio up, and clips it onto the waistband of her jeans. Then she turns and walks toward the door.

“Where are you going?”
I call out into the void.
“You can’t just leave Bit and Dr. Pierce!”

Infinity doesn’t acknowledge me at all. As she arrives at the door, she presses her ear to it. The peepholes close, and I’m plunged into pitch darkness. Suddenly the void seems to thicken, as if the space around me is somehow growing heavier, and as I cling to my invisible anchor, I can sense something approaching through the blackness. It feels as though it’s coming from somewhere to the left of me, and all of a sudden the silent dark begins resonating with vibrations, as ripples of movement buffet and shudder against me. I feel like every inch of me is quivering, and I can’t help but gasp as my mind instantly fills with sound.

I was able to enhance my hearing when I eavesdropped on Dr. Pierce, but what Infinity is doing now makes my accidental discovery pale in comparison. I can hear the breeze brushing over the tips of the blades of grass on the other side of the door, and I can hear the slow shuffle of little clawed feet scraping across the path outside, the snuffling of tiny nostrils revealing the nocturnal trek of another hedgehog.

The void grows heavier still. The ripples in the dark become even more turbulent, and the volume of everything increases tenfold. The sound of the breeze becomes a harsh, fizzing hiss, and the hedgehog’s adorable little sniffs become angry bull snorts huffing and puffing inside my ear canal. I wince at the deafening racket, but the noise soon seems to curve away from me, almost as if the ripples are being diverted, brushed aside to reveal more layers of sound underneath. These new vibrations are thinner and much more closely spaced, and as they bounce and reflect back and forth over each other, the points where their ripples cross begin pulsing with fleeting blips of light.

The effect is wholly unnerving and yet at the same time completely fascinating, as a shimmering, undulating picture of the area just outside the door begins to coalesce in the void. The image appears to stretch out twenty yards in every direction before the edges of it gradually fade into darkness, but inside the boundary of the rippling tapestry of sound, I’m able to make out the fuzzy shape of the grass and nearby bushes and shrubs, the winding concrete path, and the slope of the hillside that the door is set into. I even spot the outline of the satchel that I dropped on the pavement a few feet from the door.

I stare in wonder at the grainy image that Infinity has formed in her head, all of it made purely by combining high-pitched frequencies into some kind of sonar. I don’t see any Lobots within Infinity’s sensory scan; the immediate region outside the door is clear. I’m awestruck at what she’s able to do, and I can’t help feeling spitefully envious of the way she’s mastered her senses like this.

The picture of sound fades into the void around me, and the dim light from the corridor streams in as Infinity opens her eyes and steps back from the door. I watch through the peepholes as she flexes her hands in front of her face, testing them for mobility. Seemingly satisfied, she does the same with her arms, curling them and tensing her biceps. I can feel the raw power surging through them, and again I burn with jealousy. She is so much more in tune with the capabilities of this body than I am, but I swear nothing is going to stop me from fighting with every fiber of my being to get it back, and there’s no better time to start than now.

Grunting with effort, I slowly begin crawling forward along the invisible tether toward the eyeholes in the distance. Through them, I see Infinity reach for the door handle. She’s leaving.

“Where are you going?”
I call out again, but she still doesn’t answer as she yanks the handle down and pulls the door open. I can feel the cool night breeze on her face and see the expanse of Sector B stretching out before us. Infinity pauses, scanning the landscape from side to side as I hear the walkie-talkie crackle on her hip.

“We’re at the wreckage,” says Bit’s voice. “It’s been cut clean in half, and I can see my slate, but it’s going to take a little time to lever open a gap big enough to reach it.”

“What was that noise?” Dr. Pierce asks anxiously in the background. “Did you hear that, girly? I don’t like the dark, and I’m certain something just moved in here. Hurry up and get to work. I’ll keep lookout.”

Bit lets out a disgruntled sigh. “Anyway, Finn, I’ll let you know when I have it. I wish you were here. I could really use your help right now. I’ll check in again soon.”

Infinity seems to ignore the radio and strides out into the night. She gives the surroundings one last cautious 360-degree scan, then scoops my satchel up from the ground. She opens it, rifles through it, and for some reason I don’t understand, she snorts with bemusement as she pulls the pair of binoculars and the can of spray bandages out of the bag and tosses them both onto the grass. Infinity unclips the radio from her jeans and stuffs it into the satchel, then she slings the strap over her head, tightens it across her chest, and, with a little starting hop, takes off in a sprint down the path, back the way Bit and I came.

“Where are you going?”
I scream as loudly as I can. This time I get a suitably angry response.

“Shut up, Finn! ‘Where are you going? Where are you going?’ You sound like a goddamned broken record in my head!”

“Bit is inside the dome!”
I yell.
“You can’t just leave her!”

“Otto has a new mission, and I have mine,” Infinity seethes between measured breaths as she increases her pace. “Richard Blackstone is this way.”

“Stop! Please!”
I shout.
“He’s not worth it.”

“Enjoy talking while you still can, Finn,” replies Infinity. “Because once dear old Daddy tells me how to get rid of you, I’m gonna silence both of you, once and for all.”

I have to stop her. Now more than ever. I can feel the strength in her legs as she strides along the path, and I double my effort to claw ahead toward the eye windows as Infinity sprints on. Perhaps she was trained to run this way, but her footsteps are almost silent. She’s also running nearly twice as fast as my top speed, and it doesn’t even feel like she’s breaking a sweat as the landscape flies by.

I can feel Infinity’s hunger for revenge against my father coursing through her, burning with a fire of single-minded intensity. That’s her objective, but now I have one of my own: making it to those peepholes is my goal. I have no idea what I’m going to do when I get there, but I carry on, pulling myself forward, which is so much harder than I thought it would be, as the strange, slippery, invisible line I’m gripping on to wavers from side to side while a multitude of other unseen tendrils slap and whip against me. It feels like I’m inching my way through a sea of molasses on giant strands of angry spaghetti, and I suddenly remember Infinity describing the inside of our head in exactly the same way. That thought gives me a glimmer of hope. If she went through this, then I must be heading in the right direction, too.

Spurred on, I claw my fingers into the tether and keep heaving myself along as Infinity runs on through the night. I’m focusing all my attention on putting one hand in front of the other, so I don’t notice the view changing through the eyeholes until I feel Infinity slowing down and coming to a stop in the middle of the path. I can hear her quietly catching her breath as she stares at something strange lying on the grass a couple of yards from the edge of the pavement. Infinity looks cautiously from side to side before she approaches the object, which in the darkness, away from the lighted pathway, resembles a six-foot-long burrito-like cocoon. As she gets closer, I spot the deactivated Lobot that Bit smashed, lying next to the other side of the path. A quick glance in its direction from Infinity shows me that she notices it, too, but she obviously sees that it poses no threat as she silently creeps toward the curious-looking object in the grass.