Into the Abyss (22 page)

But she is still in one piece, I observe. All her frail human skin and bones are unmarked and solidly together, and so I can conclude that she has been safe enough without me.

I feel relief rising in me, forming a sigh that I hold in as I let Catelyn go and draw slowly back. I'm grateful when Jaxon gets to his feet, because it pulls her attention away from me.

As his brother's eyes meet his, Seth attempts his trademark confident grin. It falls flat, though, and he doesn't bother to try to recover it; he just frowns, shoves his hands into his pockets, makes some stupid comment about the weather, and then about school—about lots of pointless things—until Jaxon finally interrupts with a single, quiet question:

“Is it true?”

I don't think I have ever seen Seth look less confident than he does in this moment.

“I won't believe it until I hear you say it,” Jaxon says.

And then it happens, much the same way as it did between me and Seth that night in the warehouse. Seth finally sighs and gives in. Instead of healing technology, though, this time he proves it with his inhuman speed and strength—by kicking up a rock at his feet with incredibly quick accuracy, snatching it from the air and then crushing it to dust in his hand.

Catelyn sucks in a breath. Jaxon only stares as Seth unclenches his fist and lets the light breeze scatter the shining dust from it.

“Neat trick, right?” he says, once his hand is empty.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Jaxon asks after a long pause, still staring at the gray-dust-streaked lines in Seth's palm.

“Because,” Seth says, “your mom swore she'd send me away if I told anybody. And I . . .” He pulls his hand back, wipes the rock residue away on the side of his pants. Jaxon finally meets his eyes again, and Seth quietly finishes, “I didn't want to go away, all right?”

“So what changed?” Jaxon's voice is strained.

“A lot,” Seth says, and it is obvious from his tone that he realizes there is no more putting this off.

The next fifteen minutes or so are a confusing tangle of explanations—about Angie and the others, about what happened the day I left the CCA, and finally about the plans we've been making. When I mention our need for President Cross's help, though, Jaxon shakes his head.

“She's kind of got her hands full at the moment,” he says.

“We didn't get a chance to go into detail the other day,” Catelyn elaborates, “but things have been getting worse back at headquarters, and not just because of these recent attacks. The president was already making enemies, you know, from bringing Violet back—people calling her a clone sympathizer or whatever, and calling themselves purists, because they didn't think the CCA should have anything to do with any clone, whether it was under Huxley's control or not. And they were looking for whatever else they could pin on her to gather some more support for their side—so when Josh and his gang started talking about what happened with Seth, and the possibility of him being a . . .” She hesitates, unable to bring herself to say “clone” even now, I guess. She is staring at Seth's hand as though she expects him to reveal the original, uncrushed rock—for him to explain how a human performed what must have been a sleight-of-hand trick. “Well, you know,” she finally finishes, her gaze darting away. “It just added more fuel to the fire.”

“I should have pushed them all off the building when I had the chance,” Seth says, shaking his head.

“They're just a bunch of stupid kids,” I argue. “Surely the president's word means more than whatever rumors they were spreading?”

“It's not just the kids who were spreading those rumors, though,” Jaxon says. “Their parents are all in Iverson's inner circle, and the possibility of Seth being a clone fit their agendas perfectly. So they played up the credibility of whatever Josh and the others were saying, I'm pretty sure.”

“People already had doubts,” Catelyn says. “I guess they were glad to have something like Seth to prove them right, to justify their feelings. Because now even some of the ones who were on the fence before are joining these so-called purists. It's hard to say for sure, but there are probably as many of them now as there are of the president's loyalists.”

“So, yeah,” Jaxon says, “getting involved with this save-the-clones plan of yours probably isn't going to help her regain any support. Especially if these attacks on headquarters keep happening along with everything else.”

“Don't you see though?” I take a deep breath, focus on letting it seethe slowly back out, trying to keep my frustration from getting the better of me. “That is exactly what Huxley wants. They see the CCA cracking, and they're doing everything they can to try to make the situation worse, to make sure that the biggest obstacle to their operations completely collapses before this is all finished. They're
encouraging this civil war. And then as soon as the CCA has destroyed half of itself, Huxley will be able to come in and destroy the other half with ease. So it isn't just about saving clones—it's about the CCA saving itself, too.”

“And you think that disabling the mind control in the clones is going to undo everything that's already happened?” Jaxon asks. “Somehow miraculously put the CCA back together?”

“Maybe, maybe not. It will stop the attacks, at least. And with no more of that particular fuel being added to said fire, I'm sure your mother will have an easier job swaying people back to her side, and this revolution might manage to die out before it becomes entirely catastrophic.”

Jaxon's mouth is set in a hard, unconvinced line, but he seems to have run out of arguments, for now.

So Catelyn picks up where he left off. “You said this virus thing could take months to complete,” she says. “I don't think we have that kind of time, Violet. There may not be a CCA left to help with your plan by the time you're ready for it.”

“What if we helped make sure there was?” Seth says, and all three of us turn to him with a questioning look. “I was just thinking of a little quid pro quo,” he explains, leaning against the lamppost with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Of ways a couple of clones could prove useful to them. I mean, after all, that's why the president kept us around in the first place, right?”

“That's not the only reason Mom kept you,” Jaxon says quietly.

Seth seems determined to ignore the comment, one way or the other, and continues in a rush: “You said the other day that you thought some of these purist creeps were taking their business to somewhere outside the CCA, right?”

Jaxon nods, still looking uncertain.

“And we know that Iverson started a lot of this, with that committee he set up and everything—so at the very least, Violet and I could follow the jerk, and maybe some of those committee members, too. See what they're really up to. See who all is meeting with them, and where, and find out exactly what they're meeting about. And then we can pass that intelligence on to the president and the ones loyal to her. We help them out, and maybe we all end up on the same side in the process, right? One big, happy family that can eventually cripple Huxley's plans for world domination together.”

“We don't know exactly how many Iverson has already recruited,” Catelyn says, frowning at him. “If one of them catches you, there's no telling how many others you'll have to deal with.”

Seth rolls his eyes. “And I could crush all of their dumb little heads, same as I did that rock earlier.”

“So could I,” I point out.

The look Catelyn is giving me clearly says
I wish you wouldn't
. She stays quiet, though, only shifting her weight from foot to foot as if trying to find her center, as if all the things we've said here tonight have knocked her away from it.

Jaxon, too, is quiet for a long time. But then he and Seth exchange a look that I can't decipher, but that, for some reason, causes the first genuine grin I've seen from Seth since we got here. “I know you're going to do whatever you want,” Jaxon says. “So all I'm going to say is this: Mom is not going to be happy about you doing this.”

“Well,” Seth says, his eyes dancing in the lamplight, “between the two of us, I was always the problem child anyway, wasn't I?”

The communicator around my wrist
vibrates and lights up for the third time tonight. I double-check to be sure the audio is set to my earpiece instead of the speaker, hit accept, and Seth's voice fills my head.

“Majestic Firebird to Ice Queen,” he says, “how are things looking at the main exit?”

“I told you I wasn't answering to that ridiculous nickname,” I say, my gaze sharpening, focusing even more closely on the exit in question. I have been in this position for almost two hours now, and not a single person has gone in or come out of the elevator, which is normally the most-used method of transport between the CCA headquarters and this parking garage.

“You could have picked your own, nonridiculous handle,” Seth replies. “I gave you the opportunity.”

“Would it kill you to take this a little more seriously?”

“It very well might.”

“I think Zach might have mixed up his days,” I whisper, trying to bring the conversation back to business. “That, or he isn't as trustworthy as you thought.”

“No way,” Seth replies. “Zach is one of the good ones.”

I want to believe him. And not just him; Catelyn and
Jaxon both vouched for Zach too, when we were trying to find someone to discreetly keep watch on Iverson's comings and goings around headquarters. Zach swore that Iverson usually disappeared from the CCA around this time on most Saturdays, though, and so far there's been no sign of him.

So either Zach is wrong, or worse: Iverson has caught on to the fact that we're watching him, and is now trying to throw us off.

I press closer to the cool cement and shut my eyes for just a moment, swallowing my concerns about Zach's reliability in favor of keeping as quiet as possible. Seth fills my silence by offering me other, equally absurd nicknames. One of them—Ninja Kitten—comes dangerously close to making me laugh, until movement in my peripheral vision stops it.

“Quiet,” I breathe into my communicator. “I see someone.”

It's not Silas, though. It's his son.

And Josh is all alone this time.

I rise from my hiding place without really thinking about it, every muscle in my body suddenly tense and eager to move. To carry me, soundless and deadly, to that space behind him.

I could snap his neck before he even started to turn around.

I could finish what he started, and then he would never hurt me or Catelyn or anyone else, ever, ever again.

I watch him glance around the parking garage. He
doesn't see me, somehow, but I want to think he still senses me. I want to believe that it is me making him hesitate and look uncertain every few steps. Because there is no mistaking it: He looks uneasy. And I'm glad for it. He should be frightened. After what he did on the roof, and the way he even dared to mention Catelyn's name to me, I am the last person he would want to meet in a dark parking garage. He should be completely terrified.

My lips part and I breathe in deep, as if I could taste his fear across my tongue and savor every morsel of it.

I imagine it would taste sweet, the way they say revenge does.

He walks faster. I creep after him, darting beneath shadows cast by stairwells and graffiti-covered signs, and by the time he reaches the street, I am no more than fifteen feet behind him.
How long would it take me to clear that distance?
I wonder.

One second?

A half second?

His gaze shifts. First to the left, then to the right. But never behind him. Never to me. He lifts his communicator, taps it a few times, and then studies it for a moment. My breathing stills, quiets even further. My fingers choke around a support column to my left. I squeeze the column, and I swear I leave fingertip indents in it when I pull my hand away. In my mind, I see everything from that day on the roof through my memory's cursed clarity—so painfully vibrant, so near, that the same violence from back then surges through me all over again.

I am not the same as I was back then, though.

Because if I were, then this would likely be the moment that the vicious images in my mind and the heat in my blood would make my world flicker to black.

But none of that happens.

Instead, I center in on his every movement, on every breath that makes his chest rise and fall, on the curves of his neck and the exact points on his body that I would need to hit to break him completely.

I slink a few more steps forward.

My communicator vibrates.

Only the tiniest bit of noise, but I still dive and roll into the shadows out of an instant, instinctual drive to not be seen. Josh is out of the garage and into the street in the next moment. I fall back against the wall and absently press the accept button on the communicator.

“You all right up there, Ice Queen?”

I give myself a little mental shake, trying to make sense of these past couple of minutes. What was I doing? What was I thinking? I don't have the blackouts to blame now, but I still almost lost myself just the same.

What is wrong with me?

The communicator vibrates again.

“Okay, fine,” Seth says, “are you all right up there,
Violet
? Just answer me, please.”

“It wasn't Silas,” I say. “It was Josh, though.” I push away from the wall and start for the street. Josh isn't hard to spot once I'm there; he is one of only a handful of people walking about. I manage to zero in on his red jacket
just as he turns the corner a few blocks ahead of me. “I think I'm going to follow him,” I tell Seth.

Seth hesitates for a moment, and then all he says is: “Violet . . .”