Into the Abyss (3 page)

My hand is around her wrist, twisting it, before I realize what I'm doing.

“Let go of her!”

The other three are all in front of me in a flash, eyes wild and hands lifted slightly in gestures of almost-surrender.

Almost.
The word splinters through my thoughts.
Almost isn't good enough though, is it?
It's the same voice that urged me on before my blackout, that told me I wasn't the one who started this, but I can end it. That other voice, the one telling me to stop, that we're finished with this, seems to have retreated so deeply back into my mind that I wonder if it was truly there to begin with.

Why should I stop?

My fingers tighten on Emily's wrist, thumb tracing the thin bones beneath her skin. I can almost hear those bones popping already, so helpless against my strength. She utters something—a plea, a threat, something in between maybe—but it comes out more amusing little squeak than actual words. Her arm tenses.

She tries to jerk away.

Black dots flash across my sight.

But the darkness doesn't last this time. It's driven away by the beep of the timer resetting, reverberating through the room. I blink, and my vision clears completely as the lights go from their dimmer, hazier setting to bright and almost blinding. There's a whir of mechanics as cool air breezes down from the massive ducts above.

Someone was watching from the control room after all, it seems. Someone who has decided this session is over.

I still can't seem to unclench my fingers from Emily's wrist.

“Let go of her,” repeat the others around me. I'm not listening to them, though; a new sound, a more important sound, has reached my ears: the door opening and shutting. The same person from the control room most likely, slipping in to interfere completely. I brace myself for the inevitable lecture as footsteps approach, my eyes focused on the soft indentations I'm leaving in Emily's wrist. The voices in my head—all of them—are gone now. There is only silence beneath an odd prickling along my scalp . . . a silence that's interrupted by a familiar voice a moment later.

“Six against one, Josh? Really? And even with those odds, I still have to intervene so you all don't get your asses kicked. Pathetic.”

Josh holsters the gun and turns to the newcomer with a smug frown. “No one asked you to intervene, Seth.”

Instead of answering, Seth reaches for the grip I still have around Emily's wrist. I drop my hand and jerk away
from both of them the second Seth's fingertips sweep over mine. I actually find him one of the more tolerable people in this place, largely because Catelyn seems to think I should—but I still don't want him touching me.

That same touch, on the other hand, seems to have erased the hateful look Emily was shooting me. Her freshly grown smile is full of innocence. She's still absently rubbing her wrist, but that smile and the rest of her focus is completely on Seth now, her eyes sweeping down over his tall frame and dark skin, and then back up to his earth-toned eyes and the half-cocked grin he's giving the group. “Thanks,” she tells him. Then with a hasty glance at me, she holds up her wrist and adds, “I thought she was going to break it with her freakish strength.”

I consider pointing out that I still could if I wanted to, but decide it's not worth the effort. Instead, I shove past them and continue my interrupted path for the door. I hear Seth telling them that it's over, to not follow me. Part of me is annoyed that he stepped in. But the other part is simply glad that this time, no one tries to follow me.

•  •  •

The headquarters of the CCA—which stands for Clone Control Advocacy—seem much quieter than usual for this time of evening. I pass only a handful of people as I walk the twisting corridors back to my assigned room. Most of them hug closer to their side of the hall when they go by me, lowering their eyes and lifting their phones or communicators or whatever else they have to distract themselves with.

Exactly one person meets my gaze, though—Zach, a
boy I only know because he usually hangs out around the same people as Catelyn. And I don't know if he actually meant to look me in the eyes, but once he has, he manages to keep looking at me long enough to offer me a hello in the form of a quick head bob. Not an overly friendly gesture, but at least he's acknowledging my existence in a halfway normal manner and not tripping over himself to get away from me.

Not that I care about the ones who are doing that.

It's probably for the best that most aren't like Zach, actually; there is still blood on my neck, and that strange tingling across my scalp is still there too, only it seems to be penetrating through my skull and down into my mind now. In a way, it's even worse than those violent, warring voices in my head.

And until all of these things go away, the fewer people I have to interact with, the better.

If I believed I could get away with it, I would lock myself away from all of them indefinitely. Away from their hateful stares and words, away from these stupid training sessions—the scheduled ones or otherwise. But I have run through possible escape scenario after possible escape scenario in my brain, and they all come back with the same conclusion: The truth is, I have nowhere else to go.

Because after all, it is those stupid training sessions that have been earning me my place among these halls these past months since my “awakening”; I am a weapon, that precious tool—though not for destruction, like I first thought, but for teaching, as the president so eloquently
explained to me within hours of waking me up. It gave me an objective at least. Something to cling to. A way to somewhat belong within this organization, which is the only home I've ever known.

Though “home” is not exactly the best way to describe it; I understand enough after all these months to realize that it is not a normal home. There are few warmly colored walls here, and none of them holds safe memories, or familiar stories, or embarrassing old family photos. People live here, but they do so in neat, orderly rows, on neat, orderly schedules that keep the CCA running. And the CCA must keep running. President Cross—the woman who woke me up, who granted me refuge within these cold walls in exchange for my cooperation—never misses an opportunity to remind us of that.

Because outside these walls, the world is a dark place.

A world growing darker every day, thanks to the ones those training simulations are meant to prepare CCA members to face: clones. An untold number of clones created by the CCA's nemesis: a corporation known as Huxley, which, years ago, began slipping those clones quietly and certainly into the population at large. In time Huxley had created a sleeping army, brainwashed, programmed, and prepped to fight for the future this corporation envisioned. Simply waiting for the command go.

And I was one of the sleeping. I was born—created—in Huxley's laboratories. Another monster for its ranks.

I was apparently different, though; I managed to rebel against that programming. I couldn't tell you how, because
when I woke in this place, I remembered none of what came before. I have since pieced together some things—from stolen glances at reports of the fighting between Huxley and the CCA, and from what I could squeeze out of Catelyn, who it turns out was my sister in this before-life. But the one who I most want answers from—President Cross—refuses to say much about my monstrous past. Only that I am different, and that it doesn't matter so much where you're born. Only where you end up. This is why I was given a second chance at life.

And why would I question being allowed to live?

For all the confusion and chaos in my head and the uncertainty in my existence, there is still a beauty to my artificially beating heart that makes me reluctant to give it up.

I manage to make it close—so close—to my room when I hear an awful word I was hoping to avoid for the rest of the evening: my name. And worse still, it's come off the lips of Seth. I'm not especially surprised that he managed to catch up with me; he's the adopted son of President Cross and has spent years living among these halls, so he knows them better than anybody. Including any and all shortcuts. Which partly explains how, no matter what happens around here, somehow it seems he is always in the middle of it. Even if it doesn't concern him. Actually,
especially
if it doesn't concern him, as most things—such as what happened in that training session—don't.

“Hey,” he says as he reaches my side. At least he has the sense not to try touching me again—though when I glance
at him, he's in the middle of drawing his hand back, as if he'd at least thought about doing just that.

“Hello,” I say stiffly, only because I've learned that ignoring greetings rarely gets people to leave you alone anyway. I've also learned that when people run up to you and greet you like this, they generally have a reason for it. But the next time I glance at Seth, he's only watching me with the same sideways grin he wore back in the training room. Which is irritating, because it forces me to keep speaking. “What do you want?”

“To say you're welcome.”

I stop walking. “For what?”

“For getting those creeps to leave you alone. You're welcome for that.”

I wonder if he might be joking. Even after six months, humor is still something I haven't quite managed to grasp. And it's especially difficult to tell with this one, because it seems like he is always wearing that bright, arrogant smile, like he's in on some grand joke the universe has not bothered to tell anyone else.

“
They
should be the ones thanking you,” I say, not returning his smile. “Things would have ended badly for them if that timer had kept going.”

“Mm-hm.” He leans against the wall in front of me, partially blocking the short distance left between my room and where we stand. “And then what do you think would have happened to you?”

His question makes that tingling across my scalp worse, turns it into more of a buzzing that drowns out everything
I'd been thinking of saying to try to get rid of him. So instead of speaking, I only glare for a moment before going around him, making sure to hug the right side of the wall so there's no chance of us accidentally touching. I've made it perhaps ten steps before he calls to me again.

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Can I ask you something?”

I sigh, because short of ripping out his vocal cords, I doubt there is much I can do to stop him from talking. I never can stop him. It didn't take me long to realize this—or that, unlike most of the people in here, he is indifferent to my glaring and oblivious to the fact that I could break him in half without breaking a sweat. Nothing I do, and no rumor that has started about me yet, seems to have made him afraid to follow me around and annoy me like this.

Which makes him a bit of an idiot, maybe, but it also may be the real reason I find him a bit more tolerable than most.

I don't intend to answer whatever his question may be, but I stop all the same, and without turning around, I wait for him to finish. It takes him a moment. And then finally, in a voice not as obnoxiously loud as normal, he asks, “Do you ever wonder why she brought you back? Just so everyone here could hate you?”

The only part of me that I can manage to move right away is my head, and just barely; I tilt my face back so I can see his in the corner of my vision. He is still smiling,
but it's less arrogant than usual, and more . . . haunted. A ghost of his normal grin. This is far worse than the arrogance I have come to expect from him. I don't like the way it makes me feel, and I don't want to look at it anymore.

So I lie.

“No,” I say. “I never have.”

And then I turn and I walk straight to my room and shut the door, locking it behind me—something I never bothered to do before. I've always thought that trying to lock things out was a sign of fear. I have no use for fear. I have absorbed everything from the moment I woke up. All the dark and monstrous things in the world outside these headquarters, all the hateful words and unfair expectations inside of them—all of it. And I am afraid of none of it.

Do you ever wonder why . . . ?

I back up against the door and slide down it, onto the cold faux-marble floor. How could such a simple question turn me into a liar and door locker?

Just so everyone here could hate you?

The room in front of me is dark. Simple. Everything is clean lines and function. Bed, desk, chair, closet. It has all been designed with a purpose, just as I have been designed with a purpose.

And as confusing and chaotic as it may feel right now, I am still reluctant to give that purpose up.

There is only one person
who knows the code to my locked room—aside from perhaps President Cross, who knows everything that happens around here. Only one other person. And I should have known that she would show up before the night was over, and that no matter how many times I told her to leave, she would still insist on staying. On battering me with an endless barrage of pointless questions.

“I'm not leaving until you tell me what happened,” Catelyn says again. She sits cross-legged on my bed, staring at me. Her eyes are far too full of spark and defiance for this time of night. We ate breakfast together at eight o'clock this morning—more than fifteen hours ago. How is she still so wide awake? I can stay awake for days on end, but she isn't like me. In many ways, really, but the most noticeable of which is that she is completely human. All normal flesh and blood, and a brain and body that function best with regular, plentiful amounts of sleep.

But from moments like these, you would never know it.

“Violet,” she presses. “Seriously. Tell me.”

I finish wiping away the last of the blood from my neck, using one of the more ragged shirts from my closet,
which I've dipped in the medical alcohol Catelyn brought. The disinfecting alcohol wasn't really necessary; once I've cleaned away the blood, there is nothing to see except pale, smooth skin that looks as though it was never damaged in the first place. There is no scar to even face the possibility of infection. My skin cells are much more advanced than a normal human's, and controlled by a brain that drives them to reproduce at lightning speeds in the case of minor injuries like this. Which is why I am not worried about it—and even less willing to talk about it. With the blood washed away, all signs of that training session are already gone. There is no point in carrying on about it.