Into the Abyss (24 page)

“I wouldn't hug you if my very life depended on it, so you can stop imagining that.”

“I can't help it,” he says. “Maybe if you wouldn't act so warm and overly friendly toward me all the time, I wouldn't have that problem.”

Our voices are quiet, weak, but we're trying. Attacking the uneasiness, the uncertainty, with this silly banter that seems to have become our normal. But it doesn't quite drive those things away this time.

And Silas never embraces his son. He does grab him by the arm—but it's only so he can pull Josh away from the gate, which he does with so much force that it's almost painful to watch, because it is so clear, even to me, that Josh is not ready to leave whatever he came here for. Silas remains stern faced, though, as he directs his son into the passenger seat of the truck. Then he goes back and grabs the jet bike, loads it onto the bed, and gets in and drives
away without so much as a glance beside him.

We follow the tracker in silence, and eventually find that our earlier hunch was right: We end up by the river. And we stay there for hours, observing every person that comes and goes out of an unassuming little cinder-block building, and quietly discussing ways we might be able to better see and hear—and perhaps even record—exactly what they're talking about.

Other than that, we don't say much. There are a few times when I think Seth might, but then he seems to understand that I am taking longer than normal to process this latest encounter with Josh, and so he leaves me to it.

On the way back to the safe house, though, as we're lying on our backs on top of a shuttle as it speeds along among the city's lights, I suddenly can't keep quiet anymore.

“What was he doing there, do you think?”

I don't have to elaborate; I know Seth understands my question, though it takes him a long time to answer. “Just trying to deal with old memories, maybe,” he finally ventures.

“What memories, exactly? Was he there during the fight? During the fire?”

“No. I don't think so.” He looks reluctant to keep going, but I can tell he has more he could say.

“You're keeping something from me,” I say, frowning. “What do you know?”

“I know lots of things,” he says. “I'm sort of a genius, if you haven't noticed.”

“Don't make me force it out of you.”

He gives me a sidelong glance. “Sorry, Ice Queen, but your threats don't work on me. You should know that by now.”

I'm annoyed, but I'm also not one to beg. So I turn away from him and close my eyes. A few minutes later, though, he apparently tires of the silence, because he interrupts it again. “His mom was there,” he says. “Her name was Michelle, I think.”

I don't move. I don't say anything. I just take her name and I hoard it away with all the other words and secrets I've collected since waking up, all those other things I've felt like I should keep, even though I am not sure what to do with them.

•  •  •

We spend the next several weeks running more and more intelligence-gathering missions like these, until we know the name and face of almost every one of the CCA members who call themselves purists, until we have an idea of their fighting capability and their numbers. Numbers that reach at least a third of the existing CCA, by the time everyone is accounted for. Numbers that are enough to stage an uprising that might actually end well for them, if the cards fell just right.

Not once during all those weeks, on any of those missions, does Seth or I mention Josh. I keep replaying that conversation from the shuttle, though. And I don't sleep much—even less so than normal—but when I do, I keep finding myself waking up at odd hours of the night, my
heart pounding, my skin glistening with sweat.

Nightmares, Seth guesses when I mention it to him.

But I don't remember what happened in them, any more than I remember the life of the Violet Benson who came before.

Almost exactly two months after
they started their project, Leah bursts into the living room where Seth and I are sitting and breathlessly declares: “We've done it.” Then she gives a little bow, darts back into the kitchen, and drags a much more calm-looking Angie back into the room with her. “Tell them,” she says, which causes Angie to give a happy little sigh.

“She's right,” Angie says, and I can tell she's trying to appear modest behind her smile. “At least as far as we can test it, I think. There are a few things outside of our control that its success still hinges on, but I believe we've given it our best shot.”

“So, on to the next phase then?” I say.

“It's all business with you, isn't it?” Leah says with a soft laugh. “Personally, I'm going to celebrate for a few hours first.”

I ignore her, walking over and grabbing the laptop from the desk in the corner instead of answering. I would celebrate, maybe—I'll admit that her words caused a rush of relief, and something like elation, to flood through me—but I don't have time to let these things carry me away.

I didn't much care, in the beginning of this, about what
was happening in the CCA. Not outside of how it might have been putting Catelyn at risk, anyway.

But with every name we've collected and given to President Cross, I've felt the tension between these people growing as if it were my own, and now I can't help but worry about that tension snapping.

Soon.

Exactly how soon is frustratingly hard to say, though. We haven't had any direct conversations with the president herself; she's being watched too closely now, with so many eager to find more of her weaknesses to expose. And the ones closest to her—including Jaxon, and Catelyn by association—are being scrutinized almost as closely. So we've been relying mostly on Zach, again, to quietly relay that information we've gathered. Our conversations with him are always quick and direct, though, for safety's sake. We've talked just enough for us to have gleaned that Cross is using our intel to launch investigations, and that several of the insurgents have been dismissed as a result of it.

I can't help feeling it isn't enough, though.

The violent clone activations are continuing in the city. Last week there was yet another attack on the CCA headquarters. So for every extremist Cross dismisses, it isn't hard to believe that another will rise in his place, spurred on by these things.

And part of my plan hinges on the president using her organization's power to help us, on there being enough CCA members left who we can possibly sway to our side.

So no, I am not wasting time celebrating.

“I'm still working on teaching her how to party,” I hear Seth saying to Leah behind me. I roll my eyes as the laptop screen blinks to life. I navigate to the folder that contains the security diagrams of Huxley's former lab, which Tori obtained for us, and I open them. I don't need them personally, because I've already seen them once before; but it's easier to discuss things with the normal ones among us if we have pictures to point at.

“So, where exactly are we heading with this virus?” I ask.

Leah moves, somewhat reluctantly, to my side. “Let's see. . . .” Her finger slides along the screen. “I would try here first. It was a small computer lab, just used for minor record keeping and such; the information will have been backed up to some sort of remote server, of course, so they'll already have it—but this sort of thing wouldn't have been as vital for them to physically secure as, say, the original memory files for their clones. So they might not have moved the computers yet, and they'll likely still be wired into Huxley's closed network. Of course, that's also assuming that said computers weren't destroyed when so much of the building was.”

“So, basically, there's like a five percent chance of us uploading and unleashing the virus this way?” Seth asks.

“More like a one percent chance, when you consider the number of people from Huxley still swarming around that place, the surveillance cameras they've set up, the teams they're sending in to retrieve and secure this stuff. . . . The building's not exactly what I'd call abandoned, no matter
what the city officials are saying.” She laughs humorlessly. “Oh, and there are those city officials to worry about too. They've marked the site as hazardous—got all their pretty and bright little no-trespassing signs stuck up all over the place, as I'm sure you've noticed if you've been by there.”

“So, essentially, this is next to impossible?” I ask. Leah shrugs, that light her eyes held earlier diminished a bit. But Seth flashes me a small smile.

“Impossible games are my favorite kind,” he says.

•  •  •

We wait until it is almost dark before we say our good-byes to the rest of the house. Or until Seth says his good-byes, at least. I just stand in the corner watching. He brings a blanket to Angela, where she sits on a beat-up old sofa in the corner, and reassures her one last time that we can do this. That he and I, with the help of the team back here and the loads of equipment they have set us up with, are more than capable of doing this.

She says she believes him, but even from my distant corner I can see the worry lining her brow, and the way she wrings the blanket over and over in her hands, unwrapping herself every time Seth tries to cover her up and make her comfortable. With my perfect hearing, I have heard every one of the five times that Seth has told her we have to go. And when she looks in my direction, and very quietly asks me to come here, I hear that, too.

I wish I hadn't.

I can't ignore her now, though. So while Seth double-checks our equipment one last time, I move to her side.

“Promise me you'll make sure he doesn't do anything stupid to get himself killed, will you?” she says. “I want you both back here alive.”

I nod.

“Violet?”

“Yes?” I've already started to turn around, hoping I can escape before she asks me to make any more promises I am not sure I can keep.

“Both of you,” she says.

•  •  •

Outside, the bitterly cold night air stings my cheeks and nose.

“What did she want to say to you?” Seth asks.

I shake my head, but he keeps talking anyway as we climb into the car Tori is loaning us.

“She thinks I'm going to get myself killed,” Seth says as I pull the door shut. “The woman has no faith in me, I swear.”

“She's just worried. That's how it's supposed to be, right?” I have never known anyone I felt like I could call mother, whether by blood or otherwise, but I still understand the concept. And after spending the past two months with Seth and Angie, I can see that however they got here, however unorthodox their circumstances, mother is exactly what they both see her as. For better or worse.

Which may be why I still feel the weight of her words, draped like a heavy chain around my neck, as we drive through the city.

I wonder how she would handle it if something really did happen to him?

I am glad, at least for a moment, that I don't have anyone to call mother. It's bad enough that I have to consider the weight of Catelyn's worry whenever I do anything; if I cared anything about the ones she calls “our” parents, then I think the weight might be enough to crush me into never doing anything at all. How do humans survive with all these ties to each other, tangling them up and tying them down? I'm better off with only eight months' worth of those ties, maybe.

For a moment I think that. And then it passes, and I hear Angie's voice in my head again.

Both of you.

It took far less than eight months for her to decide that I was worth worrying about. And the thought of that makes my stomach twist, because I don't know how I should have reacted to it, even after all these weeks I've spent living under the same roof as her. Because it calls for a human response, maybe—not one of those cold calculations that I remain undeniably better at, no matter how much I interact with the “real people,” as Seth jokingly calls them.

So many cloning opponents call us machines that can't be trusted, that could not possibly understand the intricacies and complexities that come with being truly alive. The truth, though, is that right now I wish I were a machine. I wish I could have stayed where I was during my first months, in my cave in the dark underground of the CCA, where I thought of no one but me and my days were more simple, mechanical.

But humans have this tendency to reach toward light, toward answers, and to those intricate and complex things. And for something created in a laboratory, I lately feel all too human.

We park a few miles from the burned-out Huxley compound, in the near-empty parking lot of an old elementary school, and walk the rest of the way. Even along this dark, poorly lit street, I'm still worried that someone might recognize me, so we move slowly, as casually as possible; as long as we don't draw any second glances, we hope anybody who sees us will dismiss Seth and me as two perfectly normal people, on our way home from dinner or shopping or whatever other perfectly-normal-people thing we might have been out doing.

We continue to look normal, right up until we reach the department store adjacent to the old Huxley compound. I've purposely stopped short of the front of the building, well out of sight of the main gate, where Josh stood that night, and Seth doesn't question it. There might be an easier way in on the other side, but we won't be going around to check.

The moment the sidewalk and street are clear of possible prying eyes, we jump to a window ledge, to a brightly striped awning, and then finally to the rooftop. We move on crouched legs across it until we find the vantage point that Leah pointed out to us on the old aerial photographs she pulled from a public data website before we left. Between that and the diagrams of the interior we viewed on the laptop, we have a clear idea of where the
records room should be, and with the aid of night-vision binoculars, we can see it from here.