Into the Abyss (21 page)

He darts down a street that leads to a more residential area, where the houses grow increasingly spaced apart as we get closer to the bridges that stretch over the part of the Neuse River that winds through Haven. There are three bridges, total. One narrow, two-lane path that now serves the few personal cars that exist in the city, and about a half mile from it is the huge suspension bridge that closed not long after new, strict environmental regulations phased out most of those personal cars in favor of mass-transit solutions such as the ETS. Too expensive to keep up, I remember Catelyn telling me, but also expensive to tear down. Which is why the third one—the one used by those electronic transport shuttles—just runs parallel to the boarded-up suspension bridge.

Now that the number of people and houses is thinning out, Seth picks up his pace a bit, heading straight for the old suspension bridge.

“I'm guessing you have some sort of plan?” I ask.

“Of course I do. I've done this like . . . well, at least once before.”

I slow almost to a stop as he leaps over the boards and no-trespassing signs across the bridge's entrance.

“I mean, just in this particular spot, I've only done it once,” he calls, glancing back and slowing a few steps himself. “But jumping shuttles? I do it all the time.”

“Jumping . . .”

“And timing is kind of critical, so you'd better get out here before we miss our ride. I mean, unless you're afraid you can't keep up with me.”

My eyes narrow, but he's already turned back around and raced on, so he doesn't see it. Not like he needs to see it, though. I'm positive he was counting on this exact reaction when he said it. He can predict me now, and I would probably take a moment to loathe myself for that—except that, just then, I hear the metallic whir of the shuttle approaching in the distance.

I sprint to the middle of the bridge, where Seth is stopped with one hand braced against a tower, the other holding one of the cables suspended from it.

He takes a deep breath as I approach, and says, “So the tricky part—”

“You mean aside from not dying?”

“—is that we have to wait until the very end of the shuttle, because the last few cars are just for storage and automatic controller boards—no windows on them, and no people inside them who might hear our landing.”

“Do you remember the other day, when you called me insane?”

He points to a section of the bridge some twenty feet ahead, where the thicker, horizontal suspender cables droop to their lowest point. “It's thick enough to run on,” he says. “I did it last time.”

I shake my head at him, but he just smiles.

“If you miss,” he says, “you probably won't die. But still, brace yourself, because that water below is probably pretty dang cold.”

The front of the shuttle roars past.

Seth turns and breaks into a run. Slower at first, while watching almost the entire first half of the shuttle slip past, but he's a blur before he leaps onto the cable. I can't keep my eyes on him after that, because I need to focus on running myself. There is no way I am going to back down. No way I'm going to miss.

Not in front of him.

I hit the cable fast and hard. The sting of my landing shoots up through my legs, but I push through it, leaning forward to help my balance as I climb the slope of the suspender up and farther up—

And then suddenly I am as high as I can get, almost horizontal to the bridge, and I know that a second's hesitation will mean losing my momentum and falling.

So I spot the flash of silver below and to my left, and I jump.

The moment I spend in the air, arms and legs reaching, mind racing to calculate every possible outcome—how to
brace for the impact of landing in water, on the tracks, or by some miracle on the top of the car—probably lasts only seconds. But it feels like an eternity before I hit something solid again.

The surface beneath me trembles. Wind rushes into my face. My hands find an edge of warm metal and clench it so tightly I'm surprised I don't crush it.

The shuttle. I actually managed to land on the shuttle.

I roll over onto my back, struggling a bit against that wind barreling around me, and close my eyes. This ranks very high on the list of stupidest things I've done during my short life, but somehow, I don't regret it. My heart, even with all its artificial enhancements, is still fighting to keep up with me—a frantic drumbeat, pounding violent proof that I am alive, alive, alive.

I am still considering killing Seth for this, though.

My eyes shoot open as I crane my neck, searching. But they don't find him. And though I didn't think it was possible, my heartbeat skips up to an even faster beat. I'm determined not to let myself get too anxious about the thought of what might have happened to him, but somehow my body is already moving on its own, crawling along the grooved top of the shuttle until I am close enough to cautiously peer over the back lip of the last car. I scan the tracks behind us, squinting, even though I know it's really pointless—this thing is moving so quickly that the bridge is already almost out of sight.

“No . . .”

I'm embarrassed that even this tiniest bit of my anxiety
has escaped my mouth. And then it gets worse. Because out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly see him hoisting himself up from the side of the car. Just a few feet away.

How did I not notice him there?

I sigh, already knowing what's coming from the stupid grin on his face.

“You look worried,” he says.

“Only because I wasn't sure of what stop to get off at, so I needed you to be here to tell me.”

His grin doesn't waver. “So, on a scale of one to ten, how devastated do you think you would be if you lost me? Like an eleven?”

I lie back and close my eyes again.

Moments later I sense him settling down next to me, his body close but not quite touching. But I keep ignoring him, concentrating instead on the wind rushing around us, whistling in my ears and sending bumps rising across my skin. It's at least a full five minutes before Seth speaks again.

“That was kind of insane, wasn't it?” he asks, as if he just now realizes what we did.

“I believe that was the exact word I used before you did it,” I say without opening my eyes.

“Yeah.” Silence, and then: “Do me a favor and don't tell Angie about this, all right? She'd go nuts.”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won't.”

“I love being able to count on you.”

In spite of myself, I feel a smile threatening. It doesn't quite reach my lips, though, because now I am thinking
about Angie, about the rest of the group back at the safe house, and remembering the tension and uncertainty we left behind there. Tori was coming around some, maybe, but the tension between Leah and James hadn't improved much by the time we left. And I wouldn't care, normally, about a quarrel between two people I hardly know—but in this case it seems to be distracting Leah from the work she should be doing on the virus.

As the shuttle slides through a tunnel, and my eyes open to orange ceiling lights flickering past just a few feet above our faces, I find myself thinking of their argument in the kitchen.

“What did James mean the other day,” I ask, “when he said Leah of all people should know better than to make Huxley angry?”

Seth props himself up a bit on his elbows, bringing his head close enough to the top of the tunnel that it makes me flinch. He gives me a curious look—probably because he finds it as strange as I do that I'm suddenly interested in other people like this. I can't really explain it; I just haven't been able to get the image of Leah, so flustered and upset by James's words, out of my mind.

Because she's crucial to your plan
, I try convincing myself.
So you need to know everything you can about her.

Whatever the reason, I find myself growing impatient for Seth's answer.

“Well?”

“I don't know all the details,” he says. “Just that she had a daughter that died. And, same as most people involved
with Huxley, she of course had a backup clone there in the labs—but the death was after she'd already left Huxley. And it was apparently a really ugly breakup between them, so Huxley has been like. . . holding her daughter's clone hostage. It's crazy.”

I feel sick, suddenly.

Is this what it feels like? That empathy thing Catelyn was always talking about? She would probably be so happy to hear about it finally catching me like this. But just as I assumed I always would, I hate it, and I do everything in my power to try to force that sickness away, to focus on the task that lies ahead of me and nothing else.

I can't force it away fast enough, though, and that horror I feel toward Huxley must show in my face, because Seth's eyes widen a little bit.

“Oh, man,” he says.

“What?” I ask, against my better judgment.

“First you're prematurely mourning my death, and now you're worried about Leah? You realize you're sort of turning into a compassionate person, right?”

“Shut up, or I am going to compassionately shove you off this shuttle.”

“Fine by me,” he says, rising into a crouch as we emerge from the tunnel. “We're almost to our stop, anyway.”

“I'm guessing the way off also involves jumping?” I turn my head so I can see the city rushing past us: a blur of drab colors occasionally broken up by shimmers of glass and golden sunset.

“Unless you want to explain what you were doing to the
stationmaster at the end of our route, then yes,” he says. “I'd rather avoid that mess, though, since we're sort of on a schedule here. Right before our route's official stop, there's a stretch of track that goes through the place where they store and work on malfunctioning shuttles—no public access there, so we should be able to make a fairly clean getaway. Some people might see us, but there won't be enough of them to stop us or anything.”

I sigh, but it's really more of an automatic reaction to him at this point; I don't completely mean it.

It's odd—insane, as we've established—but I think some part of me is looking forward to jumping. Because I can jump, with him. I can leap from bridges and buildings and crash through the world at my full, blinding speed, and I don't have to hold back. I'm not strange to him.

And I think I finally realize, maybe, why he wanted to help me escape the CCA. Why he has been so reluctant to see Jaxon again. It's because of all the years he had to spend holding back too. It's because of his past, the twelve years he stayed hidden behind everything he could to throw people off—whether it was behind jokes, or man-made weapons to convince people he was weak enough to need them, when really he was so much stronger than all of them.

What happens now?
I wonder.

Now that he can't go back to the way things were.

“What do you think Jaxon is going to say when you tell him the truth?” I ask.

The question startles him, maybe; his balance slips a
bit, and it takes him a moment to steady himself in the driving wind. “No idea,” he says. “I think you were right, though—I doubt there's any shortage of rumors about me flying around the CCA now. He's probably already put at least some of all this together.” He inches toward the edge of the shuttle, to where he can peer more easily at the upcoming tracks, before adding, “So maybe that will make it easier.”

He doesn't sound especially convinced of this last part. But I nod as if I agree anyway, and we watch the world speed past, together in our same strangeness, until it's time for us to jump.

We reach the park ten
minutes before seven, but the two of them are already there, waiting.

As we approach the bench they sit on, paranoia starts itching the back of my neck. My senses take over on their own, eyes and ears focusing as that instinct-driven part of my brain—that part that cares more about survival than anything else—snaps to life.

Because there are other people here, of course. Jaxon and Cate won't have come alone. Even if they wanted to, the president wouldn't have allowed it, not with all the unrest the clone activations and disappearances are causing the city, and not when there are CCA members turning against the president herself, and possibly plotting rebellion or revolution from somewhere outside their headquarters.

So Jaxon and Cate have bodyguards.

I can't tell how many, but I know they're here.

“Who did you bring with you?” I ask Catelyn. I don't like not being able to see them.

Although, even if I could see them, and even if I recognized them, there would still be no way of knowing whether or not they were worth trusting.

Catelyn doesn't seem concerned about it either way. Instead of answering my question, she stands and flings her arms around me, insisting on a hug that lasts entirely too long—until I fix a firm grip on each of her shoulders and push her away as gently as I can manage.

I'm fairly certain I hear Seth snicker beside me, probably happy to see that it's taken only seconds for this reunion to become much more “warm and fuzzy” than I care for, but I ignore him. Because something strange is happening in my mind: a rapid, unexpected shift from that paranoia, from that focus on all the uncertainty and possible threats against my existence to . . . her.

Just her.

I still haven't taken my hands from her shoulders, I realize.

My eyes do a quick glance over her, and I force my mind to handle this situation in a way that feels safer, more familiar to me—by analyzing her appearance, searching for solid facts that I can infer from it. The still-there circles under her eyes tell me she hasn't caught up on her sleep since we talked over the computer that day. She's lost weight too, and together with those dark eyes, it suggests anxiety.