Into the Abyss (6 page)

Because she wanted to see how I would react.

She wanted to make sure I was like them.

They're clones. And I couldn't see it immediately, even though they obviously noticed I was different from the start. To me, they were only strange—but normal—humans that I didn't recognize. This is the first time I've encountered others like me, and it makes me feel odd and uncomfortable to have not seen them for what they are. Like I've betrayed them, somehow.

Maybe you didn't recognize them because they aren't like you at all
, that voice from earlier reminds me. And that's right, isn't it? I didn't want to be like them.

The boy has dark splotches of what looks like blood on his sleeve.

I don't want to be like them.

How strange it is to actually see them, though. To see how human clones really do look to the unexpecting eye. So strange that I am mesmerized, my normally reliable
computer of a brain refusing to pull up my original objective for crossing this bridge.

The universe feels as if it has shrunk to nothing except the three of us.

They don't stay as mesmerized by me, though. Maybe because they don't know what to do about me now that they've realized what I am. And because, a moment later, something in the room below catches their attention anyway, and both their heads turn toward it, instead. Without their gazes locked on me, the universe again expands outward a bit. I become aware of more of the sounds and sights around me—including the one that must have caught their attention below. Emily. She's asking for help now, talking into the com-bracelet on her wrist, her voice hoarse and interrupted by the occasional whimper that she tries desperately to stifle. Still trying to be proud, even as she crouches under a desk.

Stupid girl
, I think, watching the two clones watch her. Doesn't she realize they hear her? But then I remember that even I didn't notice them until they were dangerously close to me.

Suddenly I am shivering, and I don't think it has anything to do with the air vents that just kicked on above me. I feel my balance slipping. I grip tighter, just as the other two clones tumble backward—deliberately and gracefully—off the railing.

It has to be at least a fifteen-foot drop to the ground floor below, but I don't hear them landing. All I hear is Emily's loud gasp.

Stupid, stupid girl.

I fall back to the bridge, maybe not as gracefully as the other two but just as quietly. And from it, I watch those other two close in on Emily, and I scan the rest of the room below and see that it's empty. No one she was so desperately calling has come to help her yet. By the time they reach her, it will likely be too late. Not that I know what those clones are planning to do to her, exactly. Because I am not like them. I don't think like them.

Am I CCA, though? Should I be answering Emily's cries? She wasn't calling to me, but I heard her all the same. And I could swear she is looking directly up into my eyes now, even though I am still hidden in shadows and I don't think she could possibly, truly be seeing any part of me. Why would she look to me, anyway? To her, I am the same as the ones that have cornered her. No, she hasn't seen me. She is only looking up in desperation—to the heavens, maybe. Saying a prayer to the god Catelyn has tried explaining to me so many times. Looking for one of his angels, perhaps.

But I am not an angel.
I am only thinking it, but I feel my mouth moving in sync with the words, as if she was close enough to read my lips. As if I want to make certain she hears my thoughts, even if something is keeping me from saying them aloud.

I close my eyes, and I am back in that training room suddenly. I feel the cut in my neck. The blood trickling down it. I hear her mocking voice. I feel her and all the others pressing close to me. Too close.

I am not your savior.
My mouth forms the words slowly, relishing the release of each one in a terrible sort of way.

I am a monster, remember?

I am not coming to save you.

But I have moved. Pressed closer to the railing again. Because from my higher vantage point, I can see something the ones below can't: a bit of fluorescent light spilling into the far corner of that room below. A door opening. I watch as person after person slips quietly through it, all of them armed, their guns casting giant shadows on the wall beside them. The CCA, answering Emily's call. More than a dozen of them.

I press my hand to my left temple as my head begins to throb and the room pulses in and out of focus with it.

The clones are so centered on Emily at this point—each of their steps focused and deliberate, their gazes locked on her cowering figure—that I wonder how soon they will notice the firing squad sneaking toward them.

The door is shut, the CCA members and their guns are lost in the darkness of the room, and suddenly I have forgotten, again, how I ended up on this bridge.

And so with nowhere else to go, I jump down.

I don't bother to land quietly. Both clones snap their heads toward me as I circle around, positioning myself between the two of them and Emily, so that the clones have no choice but to take their attention from her. They fall silent again. Emily does too. And it's quiet enough now that the soft echoing of footsteps from the approaching CCA can be heard.

The female glances back over her shoulder. Her partner's eyes slide to Emily's for a moment before darting back to mine, and then he takes a step toward me. Challenging, almost. But I don't budge. The faint hum of charged weapons joins the oncoming footsteps, and I can almost see the calculations both of the clones are making, their stares cold and unblinking as they compute their next move.

And then, with one last curious look in my direction, they leap past both Emily and me, and they run. They head straight toward a door that I know leads to an exit hallway. I don't know if they know this—if they plan to escape, or whether or not they actually stand a chance of making it out.

“Why did you do that?”

Emily shrinks back as I turn to look at her. Before I can answer her question, though, the other CCA members emerge from the shadows with their guns lifted, their appraising glares training on me. Emily looks at them. For a moment I think she might step back and let them draw whatever conclusions they want about what's happened, and let them deal with it however they want to.

But then she surprises me by stepping closer instead.

“Why did you protect me from them?” Her voice is oddly strangled sounding. Angry, almost. “Why would you do that for me?”

I keep my eyes on hers, but I can hear and sense movement around me; a few of those guns being lowered, uncertain glances being exchanged. I should be relieved by this, I know.

The only thing I can think, though, is:
Wrong.

Emily is wrong.

I understand how it might have looked from her angle. Looks can be deceiving, though. And I could pretend that she was right, because it would make things easier for me—or at the very least, lower a few more guns. But I am growing tired of pretending. So, instead, I shake my head, and I tell her: “I didn't do it for you.”

I am not entirely sure who I did it for, or why, but it doesn't matter.

It's done now, and I am leaving, and they are all too slow and too stunned to stop me.

No more detours, is the
mantra I keep repeating to myself as I walk the rest of the way to Catelyn's room. Over and over. Because I can still hear the sound of clones and CCA members violently crashing together in the distance, and my mind keeps threatening to crash with them. My thoughts flicker in and out, the same way they did while I watched the CCA members from the bridge. And I still feel the same as I did while standing between Emily and those clones. Still caught in between them, even as I move alone through these hallways.

I pause midstep, my eyes clenching shut and my hands moving to my aching head again.

No more, no more, no more. . . .

When I finally look up again, I am no longer alone.

Catelyn is in front of me, and the first thing my little sister does is grab my hands, pull them from my head, and hold them still.

“Where have you been? And why the heck didn't you answer the messages I sent you?”

“I didn't see them,” I say, sliding my hands from hers and taking a step back. “I was . . . distracted.”

“Distracted by what, exactly?” Jaxon asks as he catches up with Catelyn.

“By a terrible headache,” I answer without looking at him.

After a few more unsuccessful interrogation attempts from Jaxon, Catelyn insists I need someplace safer and quieter if my head is hurting. And that is how I end up standing in the doorway of Jaxon's room, wishing I had simply stayed in my own bed and slept through all of this.

This is only the second time I have been in his room, and I feel every bit as out of place as I did the last time I was in here. Maybe it's because the room itself feels out of place—a soft spot in the middle of the hard, practical world all around it. Where outside there are gleaming metal walls and sensible fluorescent lights, this room is one of the few exceptions to the mood that permeates most of the base: This room feels like a home. Not my home, of course, but Jaxon has had plenty of time to make it feel like his. He and his mother have a house in the city that serves as their official address, but from what I have seen and understand, they're almost never there. It's easier just to stay here, I suppose. More comfortable. You spend enough time in a place, and pieces of your life start to rub off on it, and suddenly leaving means abandoning all of those pieces along with the place.

Maybe that's part of why I am still here too.

Besides that, looking around I can understand why Jaxon stays. Why Catelyn spends so much time in here. Even I find something warmly alluring about the soft-piled
rug and butterscotch-colored walls. And I appreciate the posters and pictures he has covering those walls too—prints of cars, mostly, and a few framed photos of him with his mother and Seth—because they give me something to focus on instead of having to talk to him or Catelyn.

I sit at Jaxon's desk because it's in the corner farthest from his bed, where the two of them are huddled together with a laptop between them. They have been talking in hushed voices ever since we came back here. Not to try to keep me out of the conversation, I don't think—because they both know I could easily hear every word if I cared enough to pay attention. I don't, though. I'm much more interested in the wall decor, and in pushing the slider on the base of this desk lamp up and down, up and down, repeatedly dimming and brightening its light. I'm considering taking it apart, to see how it works, when Catelyn walks over to me and puts a hand on my arm.

“We've messaged the president and told her you're with us,” she says. “But she, um . . . When things have settled down outside, she wants to talk to you in private.”

I stop messing with the dimmer, leaving it halfway between the lightest and darkest settings, and wait for Catelyn to elaborate. I can tell, just by glancing at her face, that there is more she could say. That she knows exactly what the president wants to talk to me about. But she doesn't go on.

I wonder if I am as easy to read as she is.

I hope not.

“She wants to know where you were when all of this started,” Jaxon says from his place on the bed.

“I was in my room,” I say evenly.

“By yourself?”

I don't answer. President's son or not, he has no business interrogating me. Catelyn frowns in his direction, but it doesn't stop him from adding: “And she wants to know exactly what happened in that training session earlier today too.”

Catelyn's hand is still on my arm, and she must feel it tense. “She just wants your side of things,” she says in her best peacekeeping voice.

My eyes, eager for more distraction, slide to the picture nearest to me. It's a family portrait, with both Jaxon and his mother looking stiff and posed, and Seth looking like they only woke him up and informed him they were taking the picture maybe thirty seconds before it happened. They all look much younger. Seth's hair is longer, dreadlocked and very different from the short-cropped style he wears it in now. His eyes seem lighter too. I study them, trying to determine whether or not this is just a trick of the camera, and his name slips out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“Tell her to ask Seth, then,” I say to Catelyn.

“Seth?”

She gives me a strange look, and I remember instantly why I didn't bring up Seth's name in my room earlier: because I still can't make any sense of his odd behavior today. And I don't like talking about things I can't make sense of.

Jaxon is on his feet now, though, and wearing the same look as Catelyn. “Have you talked to Seth recently?” His question catches me off guard. Or maybe it's the demanding way he asks it. He seems much more on edge than usual.

My eyes drift back to the portrait. “Maybe I have. So what?”

“We haven't seen Seth for hours,” Catelyn says. “And he isn't answering Jaxon's calls or messages—or anybody else's, as far as we know.”

So he was lying, earlier, when he said he'd just talked to them. Did he really know if they were both fine? Or was he just trying to convince me to leave with him? And if so, why? Why does he care about getting me out of here, enough that he would lie to do it?

Whatever the reason, this is precisely why I don't trust words.

“If you've seen him, or talked to him . . . ,” Jaxon begins. He seems to be making an effort to soften the edge from his voice. And between that and the hopeful look Catelyn is giving me, I decide it's easier just to tell them the truth.

If it makes Jaxon pissed at Seth, all the better. That's what he gets for lying to me.