Shattered Girls (Broken Dolls Book 2) (21 page)

The town is remote and old. Under the streetlights, the buildings are almost crooked, with paint peeling off. Not a soul is out as we crawl to a stop at a red light.

“I need to pee,” I blurt.

“What?”

“Pee. I haven’t gone for a long time.” Technically I’m not lying. It actually took me a while to work out what the pain in my abdomen was. “Lisa said to meet her in a pub. Is this the one?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you coming?”

“I’ll wait. Keep a lookout in case they come after us. You go do your business.” He winks. “Both of them.”

Flushed, I enter the pub, aromas of beer and steak wafting up my nostrils. It’s rustic, with a large dining area and a bar at the back. There are outdated posters of bands that played here in the past, even though the stage in the corner is discouragingly small. A drum set would barely fit, let alone an entire band. And then, there’re… ugh!

I shudder, physically ill from the gratuitous deer heads hanging next to the chalkboard menu. If it wasn’t for the stupid deer that ran out in front of our stupid car and caused me to lose the use of my stupid legs, I never would’ve turned into a doll, the company wouldn’t be holding Daniel hostage, and I wouldn’t be in this dump with beer-stained floorboards and broken ceiling fans. Still, I don’t like seeing a dead animal in any setting. Into some blood sports? Sign up for the
Hunger Games
and see how
you
like being hunted.

There are only a few customers, so I weave among tables until I reach the barwoman polishing up the glassware.

“Hey.” I rest my elbows on the bench.

She looks up and widens her eyes, staring at me like she’s seen Satan himself.

“Well, well, what do you know?” she murmurs, sweeping her jet-black hair behind her ear in a gesture familiar from my doll days. “Sianne brought you back from the dead after all. I was a little skeptical about getting your legs to work. So you remember me fully now? We can skip reintroductions and flashbacks?”

Oh, I remember her all right.

Those gaunt cheekbones, light eyes, and that slender body.

She’s skinnier, and she’s older, but she’s no different to the little brat I met years ago. The uniform hangs off her bony frame, her straightened hair is shorter, and her makeup is virtually non-existent. But there’s no denying it.

It’s Lisa. And I still don’t trust her.

“Out with it,” I say. “What’s going on? I’m in a weird town with a cat and mouse duo fighting over me. Gabby is a giant doll, and Daniel is still trapped. And you’re…” I nod at the faded scars on her wrists. “You’re different.”

“Not
that
different,” she says. “I admit it, Ella. I’m using you to help myself.”

“So what else is new?”

“And you’re still a ray of sunshine. Good. So long as we’re on the same page. Look, my old stomping ground is out of control. I’m all for reducing the population, but this is sick and…
weird.
I personally think it’s worse than the epidemic in a moral sense. They hired me because of my computer skills. I’m pretty awesome. I dropped out of engineering and psych degrees and started hacking instead. I can wipe data, create viruses. You name it. I used to
borrow
—” She makes the playful quote unquote sign with her bony fingers, and if it was supposed to be cute, it’s not! “—one miserable cent per day from thousands of bank accounts. But apparently, that’s
stealing
, so whatever. That’s how the company found me. Before I knew it, they are paying me a fortune to create programs to control humans once they’re in dolls.”

“That’s messed up,” I say. “Hey, wait! So you knew about them keeping Daniel against his will?”

She shrugs. “They’ll never let him leave. He’s too much of a liability. It’s either kill him or force him to work for them. Mind you, it was a dog move, abducting Jason. When Daniel refused to work for them, they figured that capturing Jason and torturing him would motivate Daniel. I have bigger plans for what they should be using the technology for. I understand it better than anyone. So the idea is to turn their product against them. I’ll transmit signals into the dolls and say you did it. You’ll wipe their data and give it back to me. You’ll turn them into the media and be the big hero for taking them down. I mean, you’ll get done for illegally hacking into their product and breaking in, but small price, you know?”

“Is that why you went to this trouble of getting me here? I mean, me specifically, not some other dumb patsy? Why you conspired with Sianne to get my legs working?”

“Duh. I’ve been funding her. Hey, don’t thank me, it hasn’t been trouble at all. Breaking out the way you did, at least, got Daniel, Jason, and Pam out of their cell. That’ll distract the company while we work.”

“And Gabby?”

“Gabby’s always getting herself into trouble. Believe it or not, I’m not a bad person, which is why I turned her into a doll. She’s invincible this way. You’re welcome,” she adds. “She’s a sweet girl. I’d hate for anything to happen to her.”

Something vibrates. She pulls out her phone and answers it, her eyebrows knitting into a worried frown. “What’s wrong, Jer?”

“
They’re out here! They’re looking for—”

“Jer? Jerry? Crap!” Lisa bolts outside. My muscles scream, but I follow her to the truck. We stare at the empty seat, the windows rolled down.

“He probably went to get dinner,” I try. Well, what? Optimism never hurt anyone.

Lisa shakes her head and climbs up the step. She peers into the window and grunts.

“We need to leave, Ella,” she says coolly, jumping down.

“What is it?” I heave myself up the step.

“Don’t look,” she warns. “Trust me.”

After all these years, I can’t help but doubt her. I poke my head through the window—and scream. Jerry is sprawled across the seat, eyes open, throat slashed. I jump down and gag on the sidewalk with nothing in my stomach to actually throw up.

Lisa puts a supportive hand on my back. “We have to go. They’re nearby, and we’re on their hit list.”

“But wasn’t he your friend?”

“Ella, I’m serious! We’re next! Come on!”

I wipe my mouth and follow Lisa down the road. We stop at a motorbike so shiny, I can see my haggard reflection.

“Hop on!” she says.

I balk. “What?”

“Just a five-minute ride. Jeez! I need to get my computer.”

“I could just wait? No?” I awkwardly straddle the backseat. “Do I get a helmet?”

“No.”

Lisa revs the bike, so I hug her waist. The metal beast lunges forward, speeding down the street. It’s not exactly an inconspicuous vehicle.

“You know, I only just got my legs back. I really don’t want to lose them again,” I yell, but I don’t think Lisa hears me. Or cares enough to acknowledge me if she does. The wind dries my eyes, so I close them and wait for the horrific method of transportation to end.

My stomach churns even once we swerve to a stop in front of her house, a rundown weatherboard with dead grass and a crooked chimney. The front door is wide open.

“Why do you live here?”

“Sentimental value,” she says. “It belonged to my grandfather… Crap.”

Her grandfather Crap? Well, it does take all sorts. Oh… “What’s wrong?”

She slides off her seat, runs to the front door, and peers inside. Uncertainly, I follow, stumbling in hidden dips in the ground. On tiptoes, I glance over her shoulder and into the house. It’s a pigsty. The carpet is brown and coming apart, with ex-terracotta walls that have been sloppily painted even in their heyday. There’s a pea-green couch with stuffing poking through the fabric, which is oddly reminiscent of the old chair that used to live in our attic. The coffee table is turned over, with magazines and books thrown to the ground.

“You’re
kidding
me,” Lisa hisses. “They beat me to it.”

“Beat you to what?”

“My machine. Everything I had was on there. All the programs and information I needed to transmit the signal.” She swears. “They’re heartless. Look at what they did to…”

At first I think she hiccups, but when she covers her mouth, I realize she’s containing a sob. “It must be hard to see your house ransacked.” I give her shoulder an awkward pat, which she promptly shakes off. It’s really quite odd, actually feeling sorry for Lisa.

“It’s more than that. Asshats!” She points to an aged album, clearly unable to bring herself to step inside. Scattered all around it are photos, once gray and faded, but well-loved, and now torn, crumpled, and tossed aside for, honestly, no good reason. Not even someone as devious as my goth partner in crime would be hiding her arcane passcodes on the backs of old family photographs. No, this is pure, stupid malice.

Wiping away a tear, she turns on her heel and marches back to the motorbike. “It’s all right. It’s all good. We’re good. This is why we have contingency plans. Sianne has my backup on her laptop. Is she in Central Park under the bridge like I told her?”

“Under a bridge? You do know that’s a troll joke waiting to happen.”

“Ella! Is she under the bridge?”

“I don’t know! She didn’t exactly overshare about your little all-girl club.”

“So you don’t know if she brought her laptop?”

I pause. “She brought skis.”

Lisa mutters something under her breath, too annoyed to make the bad language count.

Without a helmet and without a clue, we speed into darkness, clinging onto the only thing we have left.

Hope.

t’s the first time I’ve dreamed in a while. Maybe it’s because I’ve been happy up until now.

It wasn’t a revolutionary dream, nor did it come with an epiphany attached. It was just
weird
.

We were at a futuristic showground, with rides far surpassing our laws of physics. I was a doll again, and pleading with Gabby to stay put. She didn’t listen. She strapped herself into a cylinder tube, lying on her side with her back facing out. The instructor encouraged the riders to raise their phones in the air to film their speed as they turned.

The tubes closed, and the ride rose straight up, like a UFO. It was supposed to hover and spin in the air, but something went wrong. It dropped and crashed. I bolted over to the smoking remains, suddenly possessing super-human strength. I lifted the ride and found Gabby crushed in her tube. Blood streamed from a hole in her head as she stared vacantly.

I had a chance to change everything, though. I could rewind the scene and warn Gabby not to go on the ride. But every time I tried to convince her, she’d get on anyway.

What did it
mean
?

It’s only now it hits me. Sianne didn’t cope with the doll transition. Daniel speculated it was because of her age.

What if I end up going mad like Sianne?

“Wake up, Ella,” Lisa says. “We’re nearly there. Do you need another toilet break?”

“No,” I murmur, rubbing my eyes.

“Well, I do.”

Lisa slows the bike and veers to the side of the road. She squats behind a tree, leaving me to stare at the horizon. It must be close to morning. A tinge of yellow melts into the night sky.

“What the
HELL
?!” Lisa shrieks. She rushes back to the bike, zipping up her pants. “What is
that
?”

“What?” I struggle to see in the dark. Something rustles in the grass. “Maybe it’s a fox or rabbit?”