Into the Abyss (33 page)

I cover my mouth with my arm, and run.

Almost immediately I slip, and catch myself in a pile of flames that singe the tips of my hair. My nose fills with the scent of the burning strands. I shove myself back up as fast as I can, before any other part of me has a chance to catch fire. There is something glistening along the floor beneath my feet, beneath the flames. A fuel of some sort. More proof that this fire was deliberate. As stray embers land across the scattered drops of slick fuel, they explode in brilliant little bursts around me.

I continue to run, picking my way around the slippery spots as best I can with eyes watery from smoke.

Soon I turn a corner and leave the flames behind,
though the smoke remains, hanging heavy enough over me that I can see only inches ahead. I drop to the floor, where that smoke is at least somewhat thinner, and feel my way along the warm walls until I come to a more open room. The air in here is clearer, but it's still hard to catch my breath without choking on it.

But I have to stop for a minute. I have to give my body a chance to heal. I can still feel those blisters on my hands and face, along with more burning and an itching, pulling pain traveling up legs. It feels like my skin is shrinking, like it's too tight for my body. I lean my shoulder against the wall and close my eyes, and almost immediately I hear Seth's voice in my head.

Don't be stupid. You're tough, but you're not invincible. You can't walk through fire.

“Watch me,” I say to the smoke. Because I guess I already miss having someone to argue with.

But of course, since he isn't here to answer, it's a short-lived argument.

I don't want him here, I remind myself. It would make no sense for us to both be in danger like this, and he has more life to lose than my short eight months. He has to realize that, doesn't he? How many times did I explain to him that we weren't the same?

Still, he is going to be so mad at me when I come back.

Catelyn, too.

Don't you dare
, she warned me.
Don't you dare.

I did it anyway, though. I pushed her away, like I've done so many times before. Too many times? Enough
times that I know I will never hear the end of this when I come back.

“When I come back . . .” I repeat aloud. “When, not if.” Speaking to smoke again. It is unsurprisingly silent as I shove off the wall and continue to part my way through it. I can't waste any more time. My feet and legs still itch and burn and ache, but I do my best to ignore it.

Your system is already overloaded from trying to heal so much.

Angie's voice, now. It sounds like I imagine a mother's is supposed to sound, and I wish I'd had a chance to hear more of it. That we could have talked about simpler things, things other than this war, or the monstrous things they created and the monsters who rose up to fight those things. The memory of her voice is a comfort, cool water against the soot collecting on my parched skin.

I reach the narrow hall in the south wing—which I recognize from the directions and descriptions President Cross gave me—and can only guess that my destination is at the end of it. I don't know this part of headquarters well, and I can't actually see the door to the control room, thanks to smoke and bands of writhing flame swallowing up the space between here and there. The bands seem to be stretching, reaching to consume me next. A little closer with every passing second. My hands and feet are numb. My mouth barren. Lips cracked. Eyes nearly swollen shut.

I don't know how much longer my body is going to hold up.

It's now, or it's never.

I sprint forward, pumping my legs as hard as I can,
desperately hoping I can move fast enough to keep the flames from latching on. Five feet, ten feet, fifteen feet—and suddenly the door materializes in front of me. I don't want to figure out any security codes, or think about finding another way inside. I only want out of this fire. Even if it means breaking my way out. So without much thought, I lower my shoulder and slam full speed into the door.

It stands firm, shaking only a little at my jarring impact. The tremor reverberates up into the ceiling. Glowing bits of molten metal and ash shake free from some support beams, and they float down over me as I back up toward the door, stripping off my jacket and attempting to beat the encroaching flames away. My hand claws for the panel beside the door, even though I know it will likely be melted, twisted into a nonfunctioning blob of buttons and screen.

It is.

I lean back more fully against the door, not caring anymore that it is searing hot, and that the heat hisses right through the thin cotton shirt I am wearing beneath my jacket. The support beams above me shift and groan, more radiant pieces of them drifting away, bit by bit. I shut my eyes, not wanting to see the moment the ceiling completely gives way.

The door behind me pulls open, and I crash backward onto the floor.

Someone grabs me by the collar of my shirt, drags me farther in, and quickly slams the door shut again. I hear the ferocious whoosh of the flames on the other side, as
the fresh oxygen from this room is funneled out into them. More creaks and groans from the ceiling follow soon after.

“I expected Seth, maybe. Not you.”

I rub the soot and tears from my eyes, and look up to find Leah watching me. She is leaning beside a computer that is built into the wall, her arms folded across her chest. The room is a relief from outside, but still sweltering, and now cloudy with the smoke we let in. It all makes it hard to collect my scattered senses. To find words.

“You did this?” I finally manage to cough.

“I had help.” Her gaze drifts to the computer screen. “But, yes, I overrode the auto-program and activated the stop valves. There were others who sneaked in with me, during all that chaos and distraction the rest of you caused. Old friends of mine, if you could call them that. They started the blaze.”

“Why?”

“Fire for fire, right?” she says, and suddenly I realize: I am brushing the ash from my clothes the same way I did in Huxley's old lab. “Or at least, that's what Huxley wanted. This wasn't my idea—I only carried it out for them.”

“You were supposed to be an ex–Huxley employee,” I say, staggering to my feet. “Why are you doing anything they want?”

“Because I made a deal.” Her voice starts out sharp and sure, but it cracks and goes quiet toward the end.

My voice is equally quiet, an overwhelmed sort of calm, when I ask, “What could they have possibly offered to convince you to do this?”

“They have something of mine,” she says. “And they promised to give it back.”

A memory flashes to the front of my mind; but even though it came as quickly as my brain normally opens things, it seems oddly blurry. Surreal, almost. As if it came from a different life, even though I am sure that it was me—that it was this Violet Benson—who listened to Seth's explanation as we rode on that shuttle.

“You mean your daughter, don't you?” I ask.

Leah's eyes are haunted as they meet mine. They remind me of Angie's that night we sat at the kitchen table. Of all the questions I had, and how desperate for answers I was. How desperate I still am. Because even now, nothing I know seems right. There is no clear answer, no clear purpose for anything. No good and no evil like my rational mind has always longed for. No black or white, only shades of both and hordes of people caught in between, trying to fight their way out.

“You helped me, though,” I say, “the very first day you met me.”

She turns back to the computer and absently starts pressing buttons. “I wish Seth had never told us about you,” she says. “I wish I'd never known you were coming. That you'd never shown up at all. You made it so easy to get the information about the CCA headquarters that I needed to plan this—so easy for me to get into your brain, and access a few key memory files while I was in there.”

All I can do is stare.

I trusted her.

I thought that was what I had to do, that it was the right thing to do if I was going to evolve into something more human, something more right for this world. It was supposed to put us on the same side.

I thought we were on the same side.

“I fixed your blackouts because I really did want to,” she says quietly, as if that makes up for anything at all. “I did want to help you. But you have to understand: I had to help myself, too.”

“And everything else?” I demand. “The program you supposedly created? Was any of that even real?”

“Of course it was,” she says. “It had to be. I was working on it with Angie—and she didn't know about any of these plans. So the program is more or less functioning, and I really was excited about that. But I altered a few things in the version I gave you, to prevent it from spreading the way it needed to. I couldn't risk jeopardizing the deal I'd made with Huxley; if that program did work, if it did spread and we'd managed to free all their clones, and they found out I had a hand in it . . . well, it wouldn't have mattered what I managed to accomplish here for them, would it?”

“I still don't understand: What good will it do if Huxley does free your daughter as promised, if you're just going to die in here?”

“Do you think I'm the one who set the fire outside this particular room?”

My sudden understanding must be obvious, because with a weary little smile she says, “I wasn't planning on
dying here. I had this all mapped out so meticulously, you know—everything that would happen here, and what would come next. But I should have known there would be no next. That Huxley would avoid keeping its part of the bargain, somehow. I suppose that's what I get for making deals with devils, right? And this ending is probably the one I deserve, anyway, for what I did when I worked for them. Maybe we all deserve it for the things we've done—me, Angie, Cross. All of us.”

There's a sudden crash from the other side of the door. It shakes the ground hard enough that I almost lose my balance. I fight to steady myself, and then somehow force my burned and broken body to move to the computer and shove Leah out of the way. “I am not dying here,” I say. “Tell me how to put the system back online. Now.”

Another quake from outside.

The roof. The support beams.

Leah looks from the computer to me, and holds my gaze for a long moment—too long. I can see the thoughts churning behind her eyes, restless and searching for answers we don't have time to find right now.

“You could have just left us all, you know,” she finally says. “It would have been easy for you to save yourself.”

“I know.”

But I didn't. It never even occurred to me that I could have, until she said it.

And for whatever reason, that seems to cause a change of heart for Leah. She steps between me and the computer and silently begins to work. Minutes later we hear
the shower of pings, the sound of water against metal, and the hiss and sizzle of fire being extinguished. Then more of those scrapes and creaks of support beams.

“The roof may not hold,” I say. “We need to get out of here.”

Smoke-tinted steam floods into the room as we open the door—so much of it that my clothes are already soaked and clinging to me before we even step out underneath the sprinklers. So thick that it's almost worse than trying to find our way through the smoke.

I almost don't see the falling beam until it's too late.

But I manage to push Leah out of the way. She hits the ground in front of me just as the piece of the crumbling ceiling lands on my shoulder, crushing me to the floor and pinning me underneath it.

The air feels even damper, heavier here on the floor. I can barely breathe. I glance at my pinned legs and try to convince myself that I am strong enough to move.

Leah's hand clasps around mine. She jerks and tugs uselessly, while above us, more of the beams are slipping, caving together into a long V shape that looks as if it will collapse in on itself at any moment.

“Go!” I shout at Leah.

“I can't just—”

“I'm faster than you.” My words stutter out in between harsh breaths. Talking is taking too much of my precious energy, but she still hasn't let go of my hand. Her stubbornness reminds me of the last person I want to think about right now: Catelyn. “I'm faster than you,” I repeat
in a whisper. Quiet is easier, somehow. “I'll catch up.”

And for a moment I would swear it actually is Catelyn staring at me. That it is her, finally letting her hand slip from mine, finally backing away as I tell her, one last time:
Don't worry. I'm coming back too.

No matter how many times I run away, I always come back.

Everything feels cold all of a sudden. It must be because of the cool water raining down on me. There are still patches of defiant flames flickering among the debris, refusing to be extinguished by that water; I stare at the one closest to me and try to somehow will its warmth into my bones.

Get up
, I remind myself. That is what I am supposed to be doing. Get up and go back to Catelyn. She was always warmth. From the first day I woke up, she was a steady flame to that inferno raging inside me.

That violent inferno has been all but snuffed out now.

The water is starting to bring peace as it slides over my skin, washing away the ash. I am getting used to its coldness. Fond of it.

Somewhere up above, things are shifting. Moving. Falling.

I close my eyes, and I drift into a deep sleep.

I took some of the
flowers from my sister's funeral, because I thought I might need something else to remember her by.

There are no more replacements now. No more silly games to play, no more secrets to share, no more of her perfect face and perfect smile to be jealous of. No more us. Violet is gone, and she is not coming back, and all I have left of her is this vase full of flowers that have already started to die. That, and the tiny round tin that contains a sprinkling of her ashes.