Into the Abyss (16 page)

“What's wrong?” I hear Leah ask.

I'm too busy focusing on moving my fingers, one by one to the count of ten, to answer her.

“I only asked you a simple question,” James says. I shake my head but don't look at him, not trusting myself to take that focus off my fingers. But for some reason he sees that as a challenge, and keeps pushing me. “Sensitive, aren't we?” he says darkly. “Still missing your friends back at the CCA?”

I manage to laugh at his assumption.

It is the only response I give him though, and he doesn't seem to understand why I find him so amusing. And as it so often does with humans, that lack of understanding just makes him angry. Even without looking at him, I can feel the waves of that anger rolling off him as he asks, “Why are we sure we can trust her to be here, anyway?”

My eyes flash his direction, and my hands go still.

“She's not the same as Seth,” he says, skipping right over me to exchange a look with the other two. “Angie was responsible for his programming, at least.”

“Leave her alone, James.” It takes me a moment to break through the buzzing and realize that this small, uneasy voice belongs to Tori.

“All I'm saying is that we don't know what Cross has done with this one,” James continues, ignoring her. “She could be dangerous.”

“Could be?” The challenge slides out with a small smile before I can stop it, and I would be lying if I said some part of me didn't enjoy the way it makes him shrink away from me just the tiniest bit.

If I can't entirely control myself, I think, at least I can control this much of others.

I remember Seth's words from earlier, though—his lack of faith in my ability to not turn violent in his absence—and for whatever reason, I want to prove him wrong. So I close my eyes and force a deep breath. Over and over I force myself to breathe, even as James continues to talk, and I do everything I can to ignore his words,
because I realize by now that he has nothing good to say.

He is loud, though.

And Tori's voice is quiet in response, but the fear in her words—fear of me and what I might do—is still deafening, and I know that nothing I could ever do would completely silence it, and the thought of that makes me want to run away from them all.

At least until I remember, again, that I have nowhere to run to.

My head is caving in, splitting right between my eyes and collapsing into that violent sea of droning noise. I feel trapped, cornered, because I can't fight these people, and like it so often does when I start to feel this way, my mind begins to flicker to black.

Back away.
The words claw desperately to be heard between flashes of darkness.
Back away, before you do something you regret. Something you won't even remember.

I see Leah step toward me. Her lips are moving, but there is no sound coming out. Her hand reaches for my arm, but there is no sensation of touch. She must be holding me back, though, because when my eyes find the door to outside, and I try moving toward it, I get nowhere.

Nowhere.

Nowhere to go, and everything is turning black, black, black—

•  •  •

When the light comes back, I am lying on the ground. Leah crouches down beside me a moment later.

“Well, that isn't normal,” she says.

Her face is just inches away, and my muscles coil in response to her nearness, and they spring me to my feet and push me away without any conscious thought. My back slams into the nearby sofa. I grapple behind me for the sofa's edge—for something solid to grab hold of—and glaring at Leah, I say, “Not much about me is normal.”

“I know,” she replies, not moving from her crouched position. “But I mean, what exactly happened to you just now? Your eyes looked strange, and then it was like you were fighting with yourself, and then you just sort of . . . collapsed.”

I scan the floor around us. No flecks of blood this time. But then, I hadn't been thinking of hitting Leah—the person closest to me—before my consciousness slipped completely, so perhaps that's why.

I still shake my head at her questioning gaze though. “I don't know what happened, exactly,” I say. “I . . . I black out sometimes.”

“Sometimes? Like how often is sometimes?”

Too often
, I think, but I don't want to admit that out loud, so I just stare at a knot in the wood floor instead.

“It happens when you get upset, when you feel threatened, that sort of thing, maybe?” My eyes jump back to her, but I still don't answer. It doesn't matter, though, because she already realizes she's right. “I can fix it,” she says.

“Fix it?”

“It sounds like something is off with the prefrontal cortex controller. And god knows what else—several of the
CCA used to work at Huxley, yeah, but it's not like first-rate cerebral programmers were a dime a dozen. And I feel like this should probably be obvious, even to you, but human brains aren't exactly simple to replicate. I know President Cross's background, and I have an idea of who she has working for her, and I have to say: I'm sort of surprised you're as functional as you are. No offense.”

There is a hint of arrogance in her tone, enough that I could see Catelyn not liking this woman, but overconfidence doesn't especially bother me. I almost like her better for it. “I'm assuming you consider yourself one of these top-rate programmers, then?”

She smiles. “I learned from the best. The ‘best' being Angie, if you were wondering.”

“But Angie didn't say anything about fixing it before,” I say. “The other night, when Seth brought me to her, she checked everything out in there—wouldn't she have noticed if something was wrong with this . . . controller thing?”

“Probably?” She stands, walks over, and offers me her hand. I don't take it, but I do rise to my feet and meet her gaze as she adds, “But I also doubt she would have wanted to touch it if she had. Angie's sort of sworn off messing with that sort of thing since she left Huxley. She may have checked you out to make sure nothing was critically malfunctioning, probably as a favor to Seth, but I doubt you could talk her into making any real changes in your programming.”

“But you would make those changes?”

“Only if you want me to. No sense in letting my talents go to waste, right?”

I'm still skeptical, but some of the tension seems to be rolling out of my shoulders on its own, even as I ask, “Why should I trust you?”

She shrugs. “You don't have to,” she says. “Just thought I'd offer.” And with that, she turns and starts to walk away.

I feel the word “wait” rising in my throat, but I manage to swallow it. At least at first. Because at first, I am the same me from six months ago, still hesitant, distrustful of everything in the room, and even more loath to accept help from anyone—much less someone I've only just met.

Because what will I owe her if she helps me?

What will she expect from me then?

But then all of a sudden I realize:
I am not exactly the same, am I?
There is something bigger than that loathing inside me now. There is a desperate need for something like control, and a realization that I may have to rely on someone else if I am going to achieve it.

So I find my voice. I make Leah stop. And when she turns back to me, and she explains what we have to do to fix me, I hesitate only for a moment before nodding and agreeing to let her try.

Seth keeps his promise. It
is almost a full day before he comes back—accompanied by only Angie now—and one of the first things he does is pull me aside and hand me a small computer.

“I brought this back from the warehouse. It's been rigged to be untraceable, and you can use the Connections application on it to create a straight feed to Catelyn's communicator. You remember her number?”

“I never forget numbers. Or anything else, really.”

“Right. Computer-brain and all.”

“Just like yours.”

Or, something like his, at least. I still don't know—and maybe don't want to admit—exactly how alike we are. I imagine we're becoming more similar, though, now that Leah has had a hand in programming my brain, same as her mentor programmed Seth. I suppose it remains to be seen whether or not she did as seamless a job as Angie did; it's something I had been trying to figure out a way of properly testing, up until the moment Seth reappeared.

“So you remember, then,” he says, “what I said about not telling Catelyn anything that's happened?”

“All I want her to know is that I'm alive.”

“Right.” He still looks less confident than usual as he guides me into one of the three small rooms off the house's main living area.

“Are you planning on hovering over me the entire time I make this call?” I ask.

“Why do you think I wanted you to wait until I got back for this?”

“You really trust me that little?”

“I really do.”

It takes him a minute, but soon he has everything configured, and a video player with a green connecting bar pops up on the computer's screen. It flashes three times before Catelyn's face appears in the player.

“Oh my god. Violet!” She moves closer to the camera, squinting, like she can't believe she is seeing me. “Where are you? What's going on? And what are you calling from? What happened to your communicator?”

“Long story.” My mouth is oddly dry all of a sudden. I expected her barrage of questions but not this difficulty I would feel when facing them. There is so much I can't tell her, but I didn't think I would care about that. Now that I see her, though, not being able to tell her everything is somehow causing an actual, physical aching in my chest.

“Violet? Are you okay?”

“Yes.” I force a smile and a nod. “That's why I wanted to call you. Just so you could see for yourself, so you wouldn't do anything stupid like trying to come find me.”

I know that look she is giving me now, the way her eyes are narrowed and her lips are pressed into a tight frown;
it's the look she gets when she thinks she is being lied to, and she is trying to see past it to the truth. I get lucky this time, though, because at that moment Seth leans into the frame and distracts her.

“Seth? What the hell are you doing with her?”

“I convinced her to run away with me and become my lover,” Seth says. “We robbed a bank and now we're heading to Mexico, so this might be the last you hear from us for a while. Is Jaxon there?”

I lean away from the screen. I still don't know what else I am supposed to say to Catelyn, so for now I don't mind letting Seth take center stage; besides, it will be interesting to watch him talk to Jaxon, knowing what I do now.

How can he keep a secret as big as Angie—and as big as his own identity—from this boy he calls his brother? That he has always treated as his brother? They may not be biologically related, but I can't help but have noticed how quick Seth was to ask about Jaxon. I don't think not trusting me was his only reason for wanting to sit in on this call. A fact that becomes all the more obvious once Catelyn disappears and then comes back in a huff, dragging Jaxon into the video feed with her, and Seth's entire body seems to sink at the sight of him. Relaxing, as if just seeing Jaxon alive and well is enough to give him a heavy, overwhelming peace, if only for a moment. Even I can see that.

I can see the relief in Jaxon's eyes too—though it's clouded a bit with exasperation and possibly lack of sleep, judging by the bags under both his and Catelyn's eyes.
“What's up, man?” he asks. “What the hell are you doing? Mom is going crazy, you know—I'm going to have to tell her I've talked to you.”

I glance at Seth. He reacts to the mention of President Cross as his “mom” in the same way he always has—by not reacting at all. The lie rolls over him, easily and effortlessly.

Tell him the truth.

The thought crashes so violently into my head that I don't know how I manage to keep from blurting it out. I'm tired of all these secrets and lies. Lately it feels as though this whole world is made of nothing except secrets, stitched together with nothing but lies.

Tell him, tell him, tell him.

Could Seth ever tell him, though? Is it any different from all the things I keep filed away in the deepest compartments of my own mind? The things that I refuse to open, even for Catelyn? All my uncertainties, all that indifference I feel toward the man who is supposed to be my father, and toward the memories that belonged to the Violet Benson I was before?

Suddenly it feels as though there is much more than just a computer screen and a few miles of the dark and sleeping city separating me and my “sister.”

Maybe there will always be too much separating us.

“There was another attack here yesterday,” I hear Jaxon say, which pulls me away from thoughts of Catelyn and makes me think of my conversation with Tori and James.

“I saw a report yesterday,” I say, “about more clones going missing from the city. Was it actually something the CCA did, then? Retaliation for this latest attack on their main headquarters?”

“I don't know.”

“Because the clones that went missing weren't anywhere near those headquarters, according to that report. Did they even do anything? Or were they just guilty by association?”

Jaxon doesn't seem to be able to look at me all of a sudden. He lets his gaze fall to the safer, more familiar eyes of Seth, instead, and he says, “Remember when we used to know everything that went on in this place? And everyone, and what they were doing? . . .” He hesitates, glances at me for a breath of a moment before finding Seth again. “Yeah. It's not like that anymore. Mom only authorized people to protect the base, to deal with the clones that were actually attacking us. I have no idea what happened to any of the others. And Mom won't admit it, but I don't think she knows exactly what happened either. There are rumors flying around that Iverson and that committee he's formed were involved, and that they've all been doing a lot of other shady stuff outside of our main headquarters, but . . . I don't know what—or who—to believe around here anymore. Because that's not even the craziest thing I've heard this past week, you know. Not even close.”