Into the Abyss (2 page)

It is the easiest thing in the world, maybe. To destroy.

And destruction made the noise stop, at least for a little while.

Would destruction make this woman stop smiling like that? Is she the same as that machine?

I take a step back toward her.

And I believed my thoughts belonged to me and me alone; that this was the way things worked, the reason I had a voice that I could use only when I chose to share those thoughts. But apparently things don't work this way at all, because though I have not said a word, this woman already seems to know exactly what I am seeing in my mind.

“I wouldn't try it,” she says.

Footsteps punctuate her threat. From the crowd around us, several people walk forward. They all move with the same tense, practiced stride. They all carry shining black and silver objects in their hands.

Weapons.

Guns.

Destruction. They're tools of destruction.

But the silent and broken machine behind me is proof that so am I, and so they don't scare me.

I take another step.

Sounds of movement come then—the clicking and whining of those guns, the shuffling of feet, the tapping and scraping of uncertain fingers against the weapon metal. And then a shuffling much closer, and with it I feel a sudden pressure on my arm. I glance down and see a hand wrapped around it, just above my wrist. The hand is gripping so tightly that every vein of it is visible, every knuckle white and distinct.

“Don't. Please.” The green-eyed girl again. Catelyn. That's her name. It's grown flimsy somehow, a flickering light that keeps trying to disappear back into the shadowy parts of my mind.

“Please,” she repeats. “Please listen to me, Violet.”

Everything stops with her last word. My breathing. That flickering in my mind. The awareness of everything, of anything happening around me. I see her fingers still resting on my skin, but I don't feel them. And I just keep hearing that same word over and over:

Violet. Violet. Violet.

Again and again until even it feels strangely unreal. Incorrect. But it still refuses to flicker away.
Violet. Violet. VIOLET.

A bluish-purple color seen at the end of the spectrum opposite red.

A herbaceous plant of temperate regions.

A given name.

My name?

I jerk my wrist from Catelyn's touch. The room swirls violently as awareness crashes back into me. My awareness. Violet's awareness. And with it comes a feeling of nothing and of everything all at once, of an ending and a beginning and a desperation to go back, back to my nameless self. I clawed so frantically for this name only minutes ago, but now that I'm holding it, the weight seems unbearable. Confusing. Loaded down with things that belonged to this Violet that Catelyn knew—things that she wants to give to me but that I can't possibly take.

Can I?

How could anyone take something like that?

“So you have a name again,” says the woman. “An old name, but this is a new life.” Her voice lowers as she adds, “One I've worked very hard to give you. And don't you ever forget that.”

My balance sways. I lean back against the cold metal bed and breathe in deep, so slow and so deep that I swear I can feel my very lungs inflating with it. Bit by bit. Breathing. A sign of life. A new life.

A life like hers? Like Catelyn's? Like the lives of all the ones standing and staring at me?

Human. These are humans.

And they have hands like me. Feet like me. Legs and eyes and lungs and names just. Like. Me.

So why do I feel so alone here?

Six months later

I dive and roll across
the cracked concrete floor, missing the fist swinging at me by mere centimeters.

But I take too long springing back to a formidable position. The second fist flies even faster than the first, and it cuts roughly into the curve between my neck and jaw. I feel warmth oozing, trailing down my skin.

Blood.

Why am I bleeding?

A flash of silver catches my eye. The boy who hit me doesn't even try to keep me from looking more closely at it; his hand hangs lazily at his side, and around each of his knuckles, there is a band of metal. The edges of each band look like they've been filed to a rough surface. A blood-drawing surface. My eyes dart up.

He smiles at me.

All of this takes only seconds, but the distraction lasts long enough to prevent me from dodging the knee that slams into the small of my back a moment later. I fall forward, breath seizing in my throat. The palms of my hands absorb most of my weight. It stings and it stuns, but I grit
my teeth and manage to find enough strength to launch myself back into the air; I flip backward and land lightly on the balls of my feet, facing my attackers.

Six of them now.

They started with two—and that was supposed to be the limit. It's what we agreed on. But judging by the four more who have joined the fun since that agreement, and by the blood drying sticky against my neck, they seem to be rewriting the rules as we go.

So why shouldn't I?

The one closest to me is a girl I've fought several times before—Emily, I think her name is. She wears a smile identical to that of Metal-Knuckles. And I know she's quick. Much stronger than her tiny frame suggests too. Her right leg is weak, though, still recovering from a year-ago accident that shattered her kneecap; she was hobbling around on crutches the first time I met her. She seems determined to act as though that accident never happened, but my eyesight is much too sharp, my brain much too predatory, to miss the weak way her muscles quiver when she tries to brace that leg. She sees me watching those muscles. That determination in her eyes becomes almost feral.

She darts at me.

I wait until the timing is perfect, bank hard to the left and drag one leg behind me so it catches her right foot and knocks her off balance. As she tumbles, I catch her roughly by the arm and sling her forward—straight into the chest of Metal-Knuckles. The force is hard enough to knock him to the ground.

Hard enough that neither of them moves much once they're down.

Hard enough that I've made my point.

I should stop.

The four still standing are hesitating a bit now. Worried, maybe, that they've pushed me further than they should have. But their mouths are still moving perfectly quick. Jeering, talking threats, and swearing words much braver than their body language suggests.

I should stop,
I think again.

But then, it isn't me who started it.

One of the four has a spark of bravery and lunges toward me. It's the last clear image I have for several moments, because my vision goes mostly black after that. I glimpse flashes of light and edges of moving things, and I still hear very clearly—shouts and thumps and a scream of “Cut it out!” that I think belongs to Emily. But it's not until something slams into my head and sends me stumbling—until I hit the ground flat on my back and I have to make a conscious effort to remember how to breathe—that my eyes manage to blink some sort of clarity back into the world around me.

Only one of the original six remains standing. He looms over me, a gun in his hand. It isn't aimed at me though; instead, the blunt butt of it is tilted up toward my head, which makes me guess that this is what slammed into me and knocked me out of my rage.

“Are you insane?” he asks through panting breaths.

I remember the way they were all smiling at me just
moments ago. And now, instead of answering his question, I simply return the gesture. He stumbles, as if I've physically assaulted him with my grin, and he flips the gun around and shakily points it at me. I ignore it. Likely it's nothing more than a weak Taser gun; he's too young to have clearance to carry much more than that around here. And if it is something stronger than that, he knows as well as I do that shooting me with it would be a mistake. It likely wouldn't stop me, for starters, and he would end up just like his friends. And beyond that? Metal knuckles are one thing, but explaining a gunshot—and the potential damage it could do to me, to the president's most precious tool—is something he likely wants to avoid.

So I go on smiling and ignoring Gun-Boy—his name is Josh, I recall after a split second of processing—as I climb back to my feet. In the process, I nearly step on Emily, who has managed to make it back up to a crouching position. “This was supposed to be controlled combat,” she hisses at me, swiping at the strands of hair that have escaped her disheveled ponytail.

I touch a finger to my throat, tracing the place where the metal knuckles cut in. “It seems we could all stand to work a bit on control, doesn't it?” I say drily.

But I know she won't be the last to hiss those words—“controlled combat”—at me today. It's very likely I have a lecture in my future, perhaps from President Cross herself. Precious tool or not, I have parameters that I am supposed to work within here; namely, I am supposed to keep my inhuman strength in check—to give these young
trainees an idea of what it's like to fight the others like me, but to not actually put them in any sort of mortal danger.

Whether they deserve to be put in that danger or not.

Whether they outnumber me, cut me, taunt me, spit on me—it doesn't matter what. Because to most of the people of this organization, I am not a tool they want to use. My risks, they say, outweigh my benefits: I'm unpredictable; I'm a traitor-in-waiting. . . . Pick any argument against my existence, and it's likely I have already heard it. I was born a monstrous thing, a thing that should have been left for dead. A life that the president shouldn't have brought back.

And maybe there is truth to some of that. Maybe not. All I know is that one step too far—one deadly “accident” with any of my opponents—would be more fuel on the fire those people would like to use to burn out my existence.

I should have stopped.

It isn't the first time I've blacked out like that.

But it needs to be the last.

I glance at the screen high above us, fastened to the center of the far wall in this enclosed room. A timer counts down on it, angry red numbers telling us there are still nine minutes to go in this training session. Underneath the timer is the shaded window of the control room, which is exactly what it sounds like; everything from that timer, to the lights, the temperature, and even to the gravitational force in some of the better-equipped rooms, can be controlled from that tiny room. It also serves as an unobtrusive observation spot for instructors overseeing the scheduled sessions that take place here.

This one wasn't scheduled, though. It was an open challenge. One I would have been better off ignoring, where Josh and Metal-Knuckles set most of the rules—which I should have known they wouldn't bother following. They never do. I should have seen the other four, unfair additions coming long before they sauntered out of the shadowed corners and into the arena. Should have known prohibited weapons would be used.

But the alternative to stepping into this unfair fight would have been to hide, to avoid them until they forgot about their challenge—which I wasn't going to do. These pickup sessions are the norm around here, especially among the younger, more ambitious members. Nobody says “no” to them, and I am different enough without being the one girl who does. Besides, being called things like monstrous is bad enough.

I won't be called a coward, too.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see that two of the ones I sent to the ground have pulled themselves back to their feet. They've moved back to the corner bench they were sitting on at the beginning of the session, before they so eagerly entered the fray. They don't seem to care about the still-ticking timer; they look more than finished with this little exercise, regardless of how many of the agreed-upon minutes are technically left. They aren't the only ones either.

I head for the door.

But there are still those other four to deal with. All of them are standing now, shaking off their stupor, and they
all seem to notice me at the exact same time and with the exact same, hungry-for-more-blood gleam in their eyes. Without a word they catch up, two flanking to either side of me. I keep walking, staring with all my concentration at the metal door ahead.

“Session isn't over,” Metal-Knuckles says. His voice is viciously prideful. It's the sort of mindless pride that I've found drives so many of these trainees to keep going—particularly when they really should just stop. Worse than his words, though, is how he is so close to me now that his arm brushes mine with each step we take. My entire body cringes. I hate being touched like this; his skin so intimately glancing against mine. I hate how close he is. How close they all are.

Twenty steps to go, I estimate, eyes still on the door. I breathe in deeply through my nose and exhale several times, wiggling each of my fingers through the air, one by one to the count of ten. It's a trick Catelyn taught me to help stave off the violent blackouts.

“There are still eight minutes left,” says Metal-Knuckles, curling his way around me and attempting to block my path.

“Which is eight times as long as I need to put you permanently back on the ground.” My words don't sound like they're coming from me, a detachment that I've learned is a warning that my control is slipping. Again. Already. Maybe it's how stiflingly thick and hot we've made the air in this particular training room, or how close his arm is to touching me again, but I seem to be having a harder time clearing my head than I usually do.

“Do it then.” I shouldn't glance his way, shouldn't pay his words any attention at all. But I do. And his smile is back.

“You know she won't,” says Emily from somewhere on my left. She sounds like she's getting bored with this. I try to siphon some of that boredom from her and make it my own. “She knows better, don't you?” The question is mocking, inviting no answer from me. “Even a monster has its limits, doesn't it?”