Into the Abyss (15 page)

“No idea,” he says, and his voice sounds oddly small and choked, and for the first time since I woke up all those months ago, I think I feel something like fear.

After traveling some twenty miles
more—mostly in silence—we reach a run-down shack of a building on the edge of a meadow buried deep within the woods outside of town.

I feel as if I am on autopilot, my mind more concerned with trying to make sense of everything that's already happened than with paying attention to what is happening now. There is a blur of introductions between me and the four people inside the house, and I am vaguely aware of the suspicious looks that most of them fix me with, but that's really all I notice about them for now. What little bit of focus I can manage is on Seth. I watch him move through the house with intent and purpose—more of his “faking it,” I suppose—as he checks monitors and all the other alarm and safety measures they've equipped this house with, and then as he pulls one of the four people aside and has a quiet, heated discussion with him in the corner. Once they've finished, the man heads outside, and a few minutes later Seth follows.

I sprint after him.

“You're leaving already?”

“Angie is waiting for us.” He stops, but doesn't turn
around, just motions to the man he'd been talking to, who is now sitting expectantly behind the steering wheel of a gleaming silver car. “And so are a few other people who are going to help us out, back in the city.”

“And what about me? What am I supposed to do now?”

“I don't know. You can stay here if you want. Or, hell, leave and go to California for all I care. I thought we'd already established that I really don't have this all figured out? I got you out of trouble at the CCA. I just wanted to make sure you were far away from that place, for your own sake and to maybe, hopefully, calm things down a bit there—but that's as far as I've got with my grand master plan.”

“I never asked you to get me out of anywhere. Or to be a part of any of your plans.”

“Yeah, I realize that.”

“Maybe you should have just left me there.”

He turns back to me uncertainly. Expectantly. I don't know how to explain this to him, though—how I don't know exactly what to do, now that I've paused to catch my breath, and my head is clear, and the only life and city I've ever known has faded out of sight. Now that I don't have specific expectations. A set role to play. I thought I didn't want those things, but in its own way, this freedom is almost more frightening than a lifetime of following orders.

Because following orders is what I knew.

That girl who was so obedient to the president for those first months . . . she was who I knew.

This Violet Benson? I don't know this Violet Benson. This girl that is standing in the middle of the woods, surrounded by so many huge and complicated things. I don't know what she is supposed to feel about those things. What—if anything—she is supposed to do about them.

It feels like I'm meant to do something, though, now that I'm here.

But what if I end up doing the wrong thing?

Seth is still staring at me. To avoid speaking a little longer, and because I'm tired of wearing it anyway, I slide out of his jacket and fling it back to him. He puts it on slowly. Shoves his hands, one by one, into the pockets. “Things are more complicated for you now, aren't they?” he guesses. His voice has softened the tiniest bit, but that doesn't make me feel any better—it sounds too much like pity, which I don't want or need.

I don't say anything back.

“It sucks, doesn't it? Being caught in between like this.” He pulls the jacket's hood up and turns to leave again. “Sorry about that. I figured this would be the best thing for you, but who the hell knows in the end?”

“I want to talk to Catelyn.” The words come out of nowhere. Just like thoughts of her so often do—surfacing when I haven't tried to make them, or even when I've tried to stop them. In this case, I think she is the only sane reason I can come up with for why I care about having been ripped so unceremoniously from my life at headquarters. She is the only reason I would ever have for going back.

Is she safe?
I wonder.

“Not happening,” Seth says.

“Why?”

“Because I don't trust Catelyn, and I don't trust you to not tell Catelyn everything that's happened since you left the CCA. And the fewer people who know about this place, about Angie and everyone who's helping us, the better.”

“I won't tell her any of that. Why would I?”

“Because she is annoyingly good at getting things out of people? She would get you to talk.”

“Have you actually met me?”

“Yeah, and you aren't as difficult to crack as you think you are. Especially when Catelyn is around.”

My face burns. I feel like I've just been insulted somehow. “You can't keep me from contacting her. Besides, don't you care at all about what's happening at the CCA right now? What about Jaxon?”

“Of course I care,” he snaps. “But I can only focus on keeping one person alive at a time, all right? So just . . . I don't know. Stay here, I guess? We'll work something out when I get back, assuming you can go the whole time I'm gone without beating anyone up or violently setting anything on fire.”

“We'll see.”

“I've told them to shoot to kill if you get unruly.”

“Then I'll be sure to destroy their guns before I set the fire.”

“Good-bye, Violet.”

“Good-bye, Seth.”

•  •  •

Inside the house, I'm met with the same suspicious looks as before. But it isn't as if I've never encountered this sort of thing before; if anything, I just feel like I'm back to my familiar life at the CCA. So I ignore the stares, and I sink down into a ratty old armchair that smells like dust, and I close my eyes.

Sleep
, I think, and I file away everything else and bury it deep in my mind.

Within moments, though, I sense someone in front of me. I don't open my eyes. That someone remains anyway, and then makes the mistake of touching my shoulder. My hand darts forward, grabbing a bony elbow in the same instant my eyes flash open.

They meet the shocked face of a woman who looks like she may be a bit younger than Angie. I recognize her from the earlier introductions; she is the only one of the four whose appearance I somewhat bothered with committing to memory—mostly because she is hard to ignore, since she's so . . . bright. Silvery-blue shadow dusts her eyelids, and the only thing demanding more attention than that is her hair, which is equal parts vivid purple and a pale blond that's been bleached recently enough that I can still smell it. There's a small ring hooked into her pink-stained lips, which part slowly, uncertainly, as I stare at her.

I notice the others have risen to their feet, and then I realize how tight my grip on her arm still is.

I let go.

She keeps staring at me.

“Can I help you with something? . . .” I trail off, realizing I don't have a name to address her with. I search my mind for one, knowing that my brain likely heard and stored it even if I wasn't paying full attention earlier. She answers me before I find it, though.

“Leah,” she supplies, relaxing and suddenly looking much more cheerful and confident than the rest of her companions. “It's Leah, and no, not really anything in particular, I guess. I was just hoping you might talk to us.”

The way she watches me reminds me of the way the president did when I first woke up, though Leah's eyes are a bit kinder; it's the same, intensely interested gaze of a scientist waiting to see how an experiment plays out. I consider lashing out at her again—and I think she must anticipate that, because she draws back a bit—but in the end I decide she isn't worth the effort, and I let my attention drift instead to the computer screen nearby.

Now that I've let go of Leah's arm, the other two in the room have gone back to this screen and huddled around it, same as they were when I walked into the room and interrupted them.

“I'm assuming you weren't paying attention to anyone else's introductions either,” Leah says. She refuses to let me ignore her as thoroughly as I want to, stepping back into my line of vision as she points to the curly-haired woman seated at the computer. “So, that's Tori, who's sort of our security specialist and the reason we can call this a ‘safe' house. And next to her is James.” At the sound of his name, the man glances over and gives me a cautious
sort of half wave, but his eyes are drawn almost instantly back to the screen.

Partly because I'm curious about what's on that screen, but mostly because Leah is still much too close and I need to move, I get up and wander toward James and Tori. My gaze fixes on the computer between them.

It's a newscast being streamed, and I realize immediately why they're both having a hard time looking away from it: because the headline scrolling along the bottom reads
CLONES MISSING: SUSPECTED CCA INVOLVEMENT,
and behind the live reporter is a small brick building that serves as a CCA meetinghouse—one of the many public spaces the group has scattered throughout the city, mostly to help distract people from its actual headquarters. Nothing terribly important actually happens in any of the buildings like this, but it gives reporters like this one something to focus their cameras on.

The reporter cites her source for her story—a Huxley representative—and it makes Tori sigh. “Of course Huxley ran straight to the news with this,” she says. “Like they're perfectly innocent in this or something. I mean, I'm assuming that the CCA did have something to do with the disappearances, but how much do you want to bet that it was Huxley, again, who sent those clones to mess with the CCA in the first place?”

“But why?” I meant only to listen and observe, but suddenly I find myself glancing between Tori and James, anxious to understand. Tori shivers a little at the sound of my voice, and her gaze slides away the same way I've seen so
many others do, so often: as if looking at me might strike her with some sort of curse.

Though maybe, for her, I am a curse, or a reminder, at least, of all those cursed things she worked on at Huxley. One she would rather not look at.

James is a little braver. He meets my eyes, but his expression is strange, like he doesn't think I have any reason to be asking questions. “Because this is basically just part two of the same story that played out at the CCA headquarters a few nights ago, isn't it?” he says. “More clones directly targeting the CCA's operations. And all of them for the same reason, most likely—at least based on what Seth has told us about the things happening within that organization.”

“And that reason is because . . . ?”

“Because they see an opportunity.” There is a hint of impatience in his voice, I think, as he tries to keep watching the newscast.

I ignore it.

“The CCA is dividing,” he reluctantly continues as I step between him and the computer. “Weakening, and Huxley just wants to take the time to make sure it breaks completely. So they send clones to cause a bigger mess of things there, and throughout the rest of the CCA's operations in the city, and then they do things like tipping off this reporter”—he nods to the screen—“to get the public rallying against them too. Because believe it or not, there are still people in the city who are skeptical about Huxley being the bad guys, and they think the CCA is fabricating
most of the horrors and rumors you'll hear about them.”

“Though to be fair,” Leah chimes in, crossing the room to join us, “the CCA has done plenty of that in the past.”

“Personally, I think the world would be better off without either group,” Tori mumbles, her wide eyes still fixed, unblinking, on the screen.

Leah chews on her lip ring, but says nothing.

“Maybe,” James says. “Bottom line, though, is that said world doesn't really know all the facts about either of these organizations. And the Huxley people are using that to their advantage, trying to get some sympathy on their side.”

“And you think they're managing it?” I ask.

“Well, they've managed to make this reporter sound plenty biased, at least,” he says. “Because, sure, the missing ones are clones, but they also belonged to families in the city.”

“ ‘Belonged'? . . .” The word lodges itself in my brain.

Belonged, as in the way property belongs to a person?

Or as in the way important pieces fit as part of a whole?

Could it ever truly be the latter?

“Yeah,” he says. “And playing that up is probably stirring up people on both sides of the cloning debate. It's good for their ratings, I imagine.”

The four of us fall silent then, and we stay that way until the newscast draws to a close. Then James turns to me again. “So, you fared better than most clones at the CCA at least, huh?”

“You could say that,” I reply, though what I am thinking
is that I was only a tool there—almost certainly in the property category—and I don't know if that is any better at all. Huxley may not have been able to control me, but the president managed to, and even now, it still doesn't feel as if I am in control of myself. I don't know how I got here. Why I am breathing the same air as these three, or why they are staring at me like they expect answers, some sort of insight into the CCA or cloning that I don't have. I am as clueless as the rest of the city when it comes to the truth about these things. It doesn't seem fair, to be caught in the middle, squeezed so tightly between these two organizations that each had a hand in my creation, and still not be able to find meaning in either of them.

Maybe monsters aren't meant to have meaning.

I can hear the voices of Josh and his gang. I can see their faces in my mind, lips twisting around the word “monster.” And then, as if I needed another reminder that control is a luxury I don't have, that buzzing begins in the back of my brain. It floods warmth forward, a burning that shakes my vision and makes me feel clumsier than usual as I take a step away from the others.