Into the Abyss (8 page)

Is there really no other option for me, other than running away?

Catelyn is watching me closely, waiting, but I just silently walk over and press the buzzer outside the president's room.

We messaged ahead, so she knew I was coming. Still, it is several long moments before someone comes to the door: a man with a bruise on his left cheek, who I could swear actually jumps at the sight of me. I hold in a scowl. I haven't done anything to startle him.

Though I will admit, the longer I stand here under his wary gaze, the more tempting it is to offer him something frightening to jump about. To simply become what they all seem to expect of me.

But I restrain myself. This time. What I can't stop, though, are those stupid words Seth said earlier from running through my head:
Do you ever wonder why she brought you back? Just so everyone here could hate you?

Maybe it is time I stopped wondering and started asking.

I like this reason for my still being here better, at least: the idea that I was pursuing knowledge, instead of being dragged along by some connection to Catelyn that I couldn't manage to control.

I leave Catelyn and Jaxon and follow the man inside. There is another door once we step through the first, one with a security code panel beside it. I watch his fingers move over the panel, slowly, as if he hasn't been entrusted with the correct numbers for long enough to have them fully memorized.

The next space we enter is set up as a formal kind of sitting room, not as cold and clean lined as the office the president usually operates from, which is just down the hall. But it is still clearly a place meant for business. She
and a handful of others are gathered around a large table in the corner of it, their heads bent over a flat display screen in its center.

The man who escorted me in walks over to the president, and only once he is directly beside her does she seem to notice his presence. From him, her eyes travel to me, and they linger there as she stands up straight and dismisses most of the table, informing them that they will finish their discussion in the morning. While the others file out, my escort stays by the president, as does one other woman, who I recognize, though I don't know her name. Her eyes are cold, her hair pulled back in a tight, severe-looking bun. Both she and my escort stand like sentinels on either side of the president.

I am not surprised they're staying. Now that I think about it, I don't know that I have ever had a conversation with the president alone.

I feel that scowl from before threatening again. Not even she—a woman who I have never seen show anything like trepidation—can brave the sight of me on her own.

Can that be true?

I want those other two to leave, suddenly. I want to be alone with the president, and I want her to tell me, and only me, all the things that I deserve to know. Why am I here? Why am I the only one? And is there a way to bring back the Violet I was before—all eighteen combined years of her?

There is so much I should know that I don't.

“You look like you have a lot on your mind,” President Cross says.

“A lot has happened tonight.”

She nods, and takes a seat in one of the tall leather chairs around the table. “Come sit,” she says, gesturing to the chair beside her. I would rather stand, and normally I would, but I decide to simply go along with whatever she asks for now. It might make her go along more easily with me when I start asking my own questions.

“A lot has happened tonight,” she repeats, leaning back in her chair as I slide stiffly into mine. “I'm glad to see you escaped all the violence unscathed.”

“I slept through most of it.”

“Though you weren't in your room the whole time.”

“I went to find Catelyn.”

“I know where you were,” she says thinly. “I have security cameras. Plenty of them, in strategic places—one above the right wing bridge over sector C, for example.”

Having a conversation with the president is often like playing a game of chess. And this time is no different. I consider every angle of everything I could say next, all the ways it could leave any pieces of me vulnerable to capture and defeat, before I finally say, “I had to pass by there to get to Catelyn's room.”

“Did you see anything interesting while you were there, by chance?” she asks. And then she just leans back and watches me. Waiting, I assume, for me to move a pawn into the wrong square.

I am already tired of playing this particular game, though, so I look directly into her challenging gaze, and I say, “You have cameras. You know what I saw.”

“Perhaps. But I am still trying to decide exactly what
I
saw. The personnel who responded to Emily's distress call found only you when they reached her. They're convinced you warned the other clones and allowed them to escape. And they did escape, if you wondered.”

“I didn't,” I lie.

“All the same, the security footage was interesting, if inconclusive.”

“And what did Emily conclude about what happened?”

“Nothing. She claims to have been too shocked to remember the exact details of it all.”

I try to hold back a derisive snort. “Well, I think I may be suffering the same problem, unfortunately.”

The president's guards shift uncertainly at the mocking tone of my voice, but she only smiles at me, and her voice is equal parts steel and ice when she says, “We both know your memory is flawless, Violet. And so you remember, too, who brought you back? It wasn't Huxley. Just keep that in mind the next time you encounter their clones and you have to decide which side you're on.”

“I was not on their side,” I say.

But I know I wasn't on Emily's, either.

Watch your footage again,
I want to tell the president.
And you'd see me standing in the middle.

In the middle, and alone. As alone as I was on that day she brought me back. I wonder if she can understand that, somehow—that I don't feel like I could ever completely belong to either side. Did she think about that while she watched the shell of the old Violet sleep, all those months
ago? Did she consider it at all before she decided to wake me up?

That should be the first thing I ask her, I decide, out of all the questions spilling their way into my thoughts.

But before I can settle on exactly how to phrase this question, President Cross stands and pushes her chair in.

“Wait a minute,” I say, getting to my feet as well. “I need to ask you some things.”

“And I need sleep, unfortunately. You know the way out—and do me a favor, will you, and have the decency to look like you've received a proper scolding in here. It probably won't be enough to pacify the members you've upset, but we might as well make the effort. Right?”

I haven't made any movement toward the exit. “I have questions,” I say, more firmly this time. She gives me the same cold, placeholder smile she used earlier, and then turns and disappears through a door on the far back wall, one that I'm fairly certain leads to her own private quarters.

No one follows her.

My escort clears his throat. “Curiosity killed the clone anyway, right?” he says, giving me a pointed shove toward the door I first entered through. I recoil from his touch and throw a wild glare his way, no longer caring whether I frighten him or not.

He lets me walk myself out.

The security door clicks behind me. I stand for a moment in the low-lit vestibule on the other side of it, thinking. I already have two messages in my communicator—both
from Catelyn; one wants to know how the meeting is going, the other suggests that just the two of us get together in her room afterward and talk. But there isn't much to talk about, is there? None of my questions have been answered—they weren't even asked.

Nothing about tonight, nothing about me, makes any more sense than it did before.

What should I have done? If I had tried to stop the president from walking away, things might have turned violent, and it wouldn't have been a fight that ended well for me. It will never end well for me, as long as she is surrounded by bodyguards and personal aides—most of whom are eager for an excuse to take a swing at me anyway. And then I will only have proven all of the president's detractors right and made the division among the members here that much greater.

Do I care, though?

Should I care?

I lean against the wall, clenching my fists. My eyes lift upward, searching. Just as Emily's did earlier.

The only difference is that mine actually find a possible solution.

Or a hiding place, to be exact.

On each of the walls left and right of the door to outside, there are knockouts that look like they're intended for storage. They are high—the bottom at least seven feet above me—and reach to the ceiling. I can't tell from where I am how far back they go. But if it's deep enough for me to fit inside, then the chances of anyone walking by and
actually noticing I'm up there will be slim. And as far as I know, there are only two people I have to count on not noticing me.

Even as the plan is unfolding in my mind, I realize how crazy it is. All of the painfully bad ways that it could end. I can already see that disappointed look Catelyn does so well, her frown falling deeper as I try to explain what I was thinking, attempting this.

I press my ear against the security door behind me, listening. And suddenly I am out of time to think my plan through, because I hear two sets of footsteps approaching from the other side. I look to my left, determine the angle quickly, and hit the wall with as much speed as I can gather in the small space. My reflexes do the rest, legs bending and then pushing off with enough force to propel me across to the storage space on the other side. With no time to calculate a more graceful landing, I hit hard, my upper body flopping into the open storage space and my knees slamming hard against the wall beneath. I scramble the rest of the way inside and curl back as far as I can—which unfortunately isn't very far. At least this space is dark.

The security door opens.

I hold my breath and stop trying to curl myself smaller. The president's bodyguards are talking quietly among themselves as they step inside. It's hard to make out exact words, though, between the way my arms are cramped awkwardly up by my ears and the beeping sounds of the security panel below as one of them tests to be sure it's armed.

What feels like an eternity later, they leave. I still don't move right away, waiting and listening for any new voices or footsteps of bodyguards who might be coming to take their place. The president is known to enjoy her privacy, so I don't think she regularly sleeps with any more security than the alarmed doors and whatever other computerized defenses lie between here and her.

But after tonight that may have to change.

Luckily for me, though, after five minutes I am still the only one here. Keeping an eye on the outside door, I slowly untangle myself and slide out of my hiding place, dropping soundlessly to the floor. I turn my attention to the glowing white screen of the security panel next. With a bit of concentration, I access the memory I stored of my escort's hand moving so slowly across it earlier, and I copy his movements with my own hand. My first attempt fails, but on the second try the screen glows green as I pull my hand away, and the door's latches release with a click.

Motion lights flash on as I step back into the room on the other side. I almost freeze up, but there is no point in stopping now. I rush forward and open the door the president disappeared through . . . only to find another entry hallway. And at the end of that, yet another door. There is no security panel beside this one, but I am not foolish enough to think it will be that easy. If it isn't locked, then other security measures must be in this hall. I just can't see them.

I slip the communicator from my wrist and press a few buttons until it opens the device's digital camera. Then I point it toward the seemingly empty hallway, and with the
aid of the camera's lens, I can see them on the communicator's screen: infrared beams. Invisible to the naked eye. Waiting for me to cross them and set off an alarm. There are several sets of them, crisscrossing my path and reaching from the floor up to two, perhaps two and a half, feet from the ceiling. An abysmally small space to try to jump cleanly through, even with inhuman strength and grace on my side.

I could simply trip the alarm; it would get her attention I'm sure, send her running out here within moments.

But how many others would it attract?

Even one or two would be too many. So instead, I creep back to the room behind me, quietly grab a chair from around the table and carry it back to the hallway, taking care not to drag or bump any of its feet against the floor. I don't trust even the smallest sounds; there may be things monitoring for those, too. It's going to be impossible to do this completely silently, though, so I need to be quick. The less time she has to react to any noise I make, the better.

I climb onto the chair, size up the space one last time, and dive through it.

I hit the ground in a tumbling roll on the other side, and spring back to my feet—only to find myself facing an open door.

President Cross stands in the
center of the open doorway, gun drawn.

“I thought I heard something,” she says.

And since I have already broken every rule of my existence at this point, I decide there is no point in stopping now. I dart forward and wrap my hand around the gun, jerking it out of her grip before she has a chance to protest. I fling it away, and it skitters across the floor and underneath a couch on the other side of the room.

True to her seemingly unshakable nature, the president doesn't as much as flinch at this. She only watches the gun disappear out of the corner of her eye, and then turns her full attention back to me.

“Tell me,” she says, arching an eyebrow, “in all of your programming and all of the knowledge uploaded into your brain at your rebirth, was there perhaps, within all that, an understanding of the phrase ‘biting the hand that feeds'?”