Into the Abyss (29 page)

Zach sends a text message—a silent
We're ready.

For what feels like much too long after that, we hear only silence over the communicator's speaker.

Then the leader, in a whisper, tells us they're in position. That the bombs are set and ready to be tossed.

Flash bombs, Zach explains. Not anything that will do any major structural damage, of course, but the noise and smoke and vibrations they create—along with whatever other noise the team can make—should be enough to draw people toward it, away from the entrance we plan to use.

We slip into our own position, moving our huddle to that entrance, which is a high-security one normally reserved for the president and only a handful of others; Jaxon provided Zach with a key capable of opening it, and Zach presses that key to the panel beside the door. The light around the scanner blinks from red to green. We all ready our weapons, and Zach lifts the communicator to his lips.

“Okay,” he says. “Go.”

The door in front of us slides up at the same time a barrage of noise begins to drown out any hope of
communicating with the other team. One thunderous rumble after another as at least ten bombs go off, followed by shouts mixed in with coughing and choking.

We can't see it, but we can tell when at least some of the smoke has settled, because that's when we start to hear gunfire in the distance. Seth and I both just move faster, but the rest of our group hesitates, looking in the direction of the distraction point.

I think of Catelyn's burned face, and it's all I can do to not start grabbing people and dragging them.

“We need to focus on our part,” Seth says, more patiently than I ever could have. “Let them do theirs.” It snaps two of our group out of it, sends them sprinting to catch up with us. But the third still lingers behind. She is still standing there, wearing a torn expression, when two CCA members barrel around the corner behind us.

I'm irritated at having been slowed down, and it shows in how fast I aim and pull the trigger—almost before I can take the time to be sure the ones I'm shooting are part of the splinter group, and not the CCA loyalists we're planning to help.

I still only shoot to disarm. Even with all the intelligence we gathered, Seth is still convinced that we might be wrong about who is good, or bad, or something in between, so we decided before coming in that we would kill as few as possible. I hit the hand of the closest CCA member, and Seth makes an almost identical shot at the second one a moment later. Both of their weapons go flying as they clutch their hands against themselves and stumble to their
knees. The lingering girl finally wakes up and remembers how to move. She grabs their guns and then races after us so fast she almost stumbles herself.

We make it the rest of the way to the north wing with only a few more encounters like that one—just the occasional CCA member or two interrupting our path. Some throw up their hands in a gesture of peace as soon as they see Zach, but it isn't always that easy to quickly tell who is on our side and who isn't. So we round every corner with guns drawn and raised.

Which is good, because when Zach finally leads us to the hallway outside the room Catelyn is in, we find ourselves facing four armed guards.

And they don't shoot just to disarm.

The first bullet sears through my arm—but it would have hit me in the chest if I hadn't twisted as quickly as I did. Focusing on dodging that, though, makes my own shot completely miss its target and hit the wall behind him instead. He takes aim at me again, but before he can fire, someone grabs his arm and twists it so hard, I am surprised we don't hear the crack of breaking bone.

“Idiots,” snaps a voice that makes my flesh crawl. I allow my focus to abandon my target, and instead find Josh's face as he throws off his grip on the gunman's arm. “What do you all think you're doing? We haven't been given the order to kill or even harm them—my dad wants them alive and intact.” He tilts his head toward us, and his eyes find mine. “It makes for a more dramatic statement that way.”

Seth and I both lift our guns, train them on Josh's forehead.

He lifts his gun too. But not at us. Instead, he points it back into the room he just came out of. “Who do you think I'll hit if I pull the trigger now?” he asks.

My arm shakes, and my aim dips, just slightly.

“I'll give you three guesses who it is,” he says. “Or, you could just refuse to lower your weapons, and then you'll find out the hard way.”

I hate playing his games, but I don't see any other choice at the moment. I jerk my arm down, knocking Seth's down with it, and then turn to make sure no one else in our group has any weapons raised that might provoke Josh any further.

“Come on, man,” Seth says. “Why are you doing this?”

Josh looks almost thoughtful for a moment. And then, in a voice so chillingly detached it sends a shiver through me, he says: “We're only doing our part to right her wrongs. To prevent more wrongs.” He still doesn't take his aim off Catelyn.

Seth's voice is oddly soft as he says: “This isn't going to change anything that happened.”

“No,” Josh snaps. “But this is going to change everything that happens next.”

“And what exactly do you think is going to happen next?” I ask, trying to keep my voice as quiet and calm as Seth's.

“The president was weak,” Josh says, his gaze sliding to mine. “And the CCA has been growing weaker underneath
her. But now? Now my dad will be the one to bring this organization back to what it was intended to be, only even more powerful than before—all of you clones and your disgusting creators will actually have a reason to fear us again. And with my dad in charge—”

“You get to be his idiot lackey who doesn't have to actually think for himself?” Seth interrupts.

Josh's eyes narrow dangerously.

“Or who could think for himself,” Seth goes on without missing a beat, “but will still be too much of a coward to actually do it.”

I want to hit him. Because Josh's finger is shaking, itching toward the trigger, and I swear, if Seth makes him pull it—

“At least we know you're smart enough to follow orders though, right? So not completely brain dead. Your daddy really must be very proud.” I'm still considering hitting him, but then I see the way Josh's whole hand is moving now, tipping the gun back toward us, bit by tiny shivering bit, and suddenly I realize what Seth is doing.

Of course.

If there is one thing Seth is good at, it is making people want to shoot him. And that gun might be able to kill Catelyn, but it isn't going to kill either of us. Josh knows that, of course.

All it takes to make him forget it, though, are a few more taunts.

He swings the gun toward us. We move so quickly that by the time he fires, we're both already in his face.
Seth knocks the gun from his hand, and I do what I've been fantasizing about for months now, and throw all my strength into a punch, slamming my fist into Josh's face and sending him spiraling into the wall. Shots fill the air around us. The rest of Josh's group forget about any orders and simply shoot to stop us, and our backup answers with fire of their own.

I don't care about what happens in this hallway now, though. Josh is still lying on the ground. He and his threats are out of my way. I sprint for the room holding Catelyn, colliding with one last guard on my way through the door. I manage to wrench his weapon from his hand and shove him out of the room and out of my way easily enough. The chaos of the battle in the hallway falls behind me as I turn back, expecting to see my sister, to be able to finally make her safe again.

But she is not there.

The fighting outside comes to
an abrupt halt as I grab Josh, jerk him back to his feet, and throw him against the wall.

“Where is she?”

His head is lolling a bit from side to side, and his eyes are unfocused, still dazed from my punch. But he manages to laugh.

Seth has a gun in his face a moment later. “Answer the lady's question,” he says.

“Did you think we wouldn't know you would come straight to where you thought your sister was being held? New life, but you still end up with the same old weaknesses. Fascinating stuff, right?” Josh finally manages to hold his head straight and look me somewhat in the eyes. “We made sure our false trail was well laid, of course.”

His gaze flashes toward Zach. Zach, whose gun is raised and who, to his credit, looks mortified to have led us to the wrong place.

“Don't blame him,” Josh says. “He tried, right? Shame none of you realized we had you heading as far from any exits as possible, just in case you thought about attempting any quick escapes once we had you cornered.”

Now it's my turn to laugh. “Do you honestly think you have us cornered?” I glance to my left, at the four of his group still standing. “You realize one of me is worth ten of you, don't you?”

Josh nods. Or it's something like a nod, anyway; I have him pinned so tightly against the wall that he can't move much, his head included. “Yes,” he says. “Which is why we planned for a lot more to meet you here. The little bomb show on the other side of the building, which I'm assuming you're responsible for, distracted a few, but they should be here”—he tries to glance down at his communicator, but I press him even straighter up against the wall and tighten the grip I have around his throat—“soon.” He finishes in a cough.

“Guess I should hurry and kill you now, then.” The threat has only just left my mouth when the hallway on either side of us starts to flood with people. So many people. Ones that we already knew about, of course—but there are some unexpected faces too. Some that we missed. Too many that we missed, too many people period, and all of them together are blocking any chance of our escape. Any chance of me getting to Catelyn.

I hear Seth curse, and then he tells the rest of our group to lower their weapons. I glance back to see them doing it. It surprises me. Even this outnumbered, they were still planning to fight?

Should I keep fighting?

I could still kill Josh, at least. And likely I could take out a lot more before they decided how to stop me. Especially
if they truly do want to keep me alive on the orders of Josh's father.

“Go ahead and do it,” Josh says. His voice is still strained from my fingers pressing in. “Finish what you started,” he coughs. “You have a bigger audience now and everything.”

I want to. More than I ever did in the training room, on the roof, in that parking garage. And whatever uncertainty I had felt toward him the night we watched him at Huxley is gone. I know exactly what I want now.

Destruction.
I thought it on the day I was born, and I am thinking it now. And I still think it is the easiest thing in the world, maybe. To destroy.

“I know you want to,” Josh says.

“Oh, I do,” I assure him. “But I am not a monster.”

So I let him go, and I step back and let the crowd surge over me and drag me away.

•  •  •

I've never experienced dreaming before.

There were things that woke me up at the safe house, of course—but they were never clear like this. I never saw them, or remembered them, and Seth had called them nightmares. This doesn't seem like a nightmare. Not at first.

But I know I'm dreaming, because I can see myself. A much younger self that I never actually knew, but that I've seen before, in pictures and through stories Catelyn has tried to paint for me. And she is there too. Catelyn. Even younger than I am, with her hair in pigtails and dirt smudged on one of her cheeks. We're both laughing at
something like I've never laughed before, and the grass we're lying on is brilliant and green and the sun overhead is blinding.

Then the scene reels and goes dark. My stomach seizes, and it isn't a dreamlike gut wrenching, but a solid, wide-awake fear at the black loneliness around me.

“Come back,” I hear a voice say. My voice, I realize. Only the younger version of it again. “Come back, come back, come back—”

Then she does. We both do. A little older looking, but still Catelyn and me and that same soft grass. That same warm sun. We're singing something. It starts out as a silly, high-pitched melody that we're both giggling too much to remember the proper words to, but soon she starts to hit actual notes, and I go silent and just listen while she finishes. Her voice fades off toward the end, and the blinding light of the sun fades with it, and soon I'm back in that blackness again.

“Come back, come back. . . . I don't want to be alone here.”

Something hits me in the side. Hard.

My hand strikes toward it, grabs on to what feels like a foot. My eyes blink open, and after a moment of sleepy confusion, I realize that foot belongs to Seth.

“You were mumbling a lot,” he says. “I thought you might have been having another nightmare.”

Was it a nightmare?

“It wasn't all a nightmare, was it?”

I was wondering the same thing, but it wasn't me
who asked the question. It was Catelyn. I turn and find her staring at me, and I know it isn't a dream anymore, because her face is still burned—covered partway with a ragged strip of cloth—and, other than that, she looks just like she always has to this version of me. Like brightness and warmth and green eyes glistening with tears that she could shed at any given moment.

“It wasn't all a nightmare,” she repeats, “because some of the words you were saying . . . some of them sounded familiar. In a good way.”

“Words like song lyrics?” I wonder aloud.

She nods, eyes widening a little more. “From a song our grandma used to sing. I used to sing it while I sat with you after . . . when they were working on you a few months ago, I mean. You were still in that coma. I didn't think you could hear me.”