Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) (22 page)

Alessa sighed. “But
we’re
not
, Isaac.
Don’t you see? We’re going to come back here, and we’re going to
plan, and then we’re going to war. Regina asked for a
base
, not a sanctuary.
She wants to attack. She wants to free all the people trapped in
Paragon and get revenge for what they’ve done to us.”

“
But don’t you want that
too?” he questioned.

“
Yes. No. I don’t know
anymore,” she stammered. “I thought I did. But do you really think
we’re going to make it through this?”

“
Less, you’ve gotta think
positive…”

He reached for her hand, but she
snatched it away.

“
No, Isaac. Let’s consider
the facts for a minute.”

He clenched his jaw and sat back,
waiting for her to continue.

“
One: This base, despite
how awesome it is, is hundreds of miles from Paragon. Even if we
can somehow manage to sneak the entire resistance – which is, what,
a
thousand
people
by now? – off the compound, what do you think the chances are that
we’ll make it all the way here before Paragon catches up with
us?”

“
Okay, that’s a valid
concern. But there are ways around that, though – we can split into
smaller groups, maybe we can rig some kind of camouflage, we can
–”

Alessa ignored his retorts
and continued. “Two: We don’t know who our enemy is. It’s not the
Ruling Class – we’ve spent enough time spying on them to know that
they’re just a bunch of bloated bureaucrats who can’t seem to agree
on anything. But
someone
put them in charge, someone with this crazy
technology that can alter our minds, who thinks it’s okay to
control people through drugs and get rid of anyone who doesn’t
comply, who managed to organize a military and a prison right under
our noses. How are we supposed to fight them if we don’t even know
who they are?”

“
But that’s not our job to
worry about, Less. I’m sure Regina will have a plan…”

“
Three: There are
super-fast, super-strong, bloodthirsty
creatures
trying to kill us. What
the hell are they? Where did they come from? Who knows how many of
them are out there? And what if they’re all just sitting up there
waiting for us to come out so they can
eat
us
?”

Isaac stifled a laugh – it
really wasn’t funny, but the look on Alessa’s face was priceless.
“No one’s going
eat
us, Less.”

“
You don’t know that!” she
argued. “And four: Something is seriously messed up in my brain,
something that I can’t control and don’t understand. I saw your
thoughts when you were dying. I felt what this security guy felt
before he killed himself, and what all those people in the mall
felt before the virus took them. I’m getting weird feelings
whenever those beasts are around. And I can’t seem to shut it off.
Even if everything somehow magically works out with the rebellion,
how am I supposed to live like this?”

“
Maybe the rebels will
know what’s going on with that,” he rejoined. “Maybe it’s happened
to other people, too.”

Isaac trailed off, rubbing his
temples. He felt drained. Alessa was right to worry about all of
this – he knew that – but what else could they do? They had to move
forward. That was their only choice.

She sat huffing in her chair. He took
her hands in his, holding them tight. “Alessa, listen. You’re
right. You’re right about all of it – the odds aren’t exactly
stacked in our favor. But it’s not like we can just run away. What
about Janie? You’re just gonna leave her there?”

“
No,” she admitted,
begrudgingly.

“
And I’ve got to go back
for Josephine, right?”

“
Yeah,” she
sighed.

“
And what about everyone
else? What happens to all those people trapped in Paragon, in the
prison, on the dramas – don’t they deserve to be rescued,
too?”

“
Yes
,” she grumbled. “
I
just don’t want to have to be the one to rescue
them. I didn’t ask for this kind of responsibility.”

Isaac shrugged his shoulders. “None of
us did. But sometimes we don’t get to choose our path, Less.
Sometimes we just have to do something because we’re the only ones
who can.”

“
But why us, Isaac?
Why
me
? There’s
nothing exceptional about me – I’m just like everyone else. How did
I end up in the middle of this mess? How –” She sighed deeply. “How
am I not supposed to fail?”

And there it was. That was the root of
all this. She was afraid of letting everyone down.

“
You’re not going to fail,
Less, because I’m not going to let you.” He squeezed her hand and
she lifted her eyes, the tears glimmering on her lashes. “Just like
you never allowed me to fall short. We’re in this together – we
always have been. We’ll just keep doing what we do, and one day,
we’ll look up, and it will all be over. And no one will have eaten
us, I promise.”

A laugh bubbled up from Alessa’s chest
as she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. And there
was that smile again.

“
You promise?”

“
Cross my
heart.”

“
All right.” He could tell
she wasn’t completely satisfied, but she seemed resigned. “Let’s
get going then.”

They hadn’t ventured even ten feet
outside the building when Isaac began questioning if he could
actually keep that promise.

They’d exited through a side door,
shutting it quietly behind them as they surveyed the expanse of the
lawn, squinting in the afternoon sun. All seemed clear, but as they
rounded the corner by the main entrance, Alessa had suddenly
stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide and her jaw slack. “Isaac –
look.”

She pointed at the wide doorway to his
left, and he tentatively turned his head to see what she was gaping
at.

Gouged deep into the glass, Isaac was
disturbed to find, were claw marks – set upon set of frantic
scratches straining to get inside.

Isaac released a long breath. “That’s
not good.”

“
No,” Alessa agreed. “No,
it’s not.”

“
They knew we were here.”
Isaac glanced towards the shady groves of trees punctuating the
driveway. Shadows – all he could see were shadows. They were still,
but who knew for how long.

“
That glass is
military-grade,” he whistled. It was about as indestructible as
glass could get. “Whatever did this –”

“–
sliced through it like
butter,” Alessa finished.

Isaac didn’t even want to think about
what those claws might do to flesh. Or bone, for that matter. “You
brought those guns, right?”

Alessa dug them out of her bag and
handed one to him, tucking the other into the back waistband of her
pants. “Not that we know how to use them.”

Isaac flipped the safety off and on
and practiced his stance. “How hard could it be?”

Alessa’s eyebrow jumped in response.
“How about we just stay far enough away that we don’t have to find
out?”

“
Works for me,” he smiled,
slipping the gun into his coat pocket. “Let’s move.”

They headed off toward the highway,
backtracking through the tall grass and towering sculptures as the
bright winter sun glared down. There wasn’t much in the way of
hiding places along this route, but at least no one could sneak up
on them.

When they reached the highway, Alessa
turned to Isaac, a hopeful look in her eyes. “Do you think someone
within the rebels will really know what’s happening to
me?”

“
With the ghost thing?”
Isaac asked. “I think it’s our best shot. It certainly seems to be
related to the stitch somehow, right? And there are plenty of other
rebels who’ve been stitched.”

“
It’s just so different
than what I experienced under the stitch. I’m not, you know, seeing
dead people. I’m feeling things…”

“
You’re feeling things
that dead people felt. That’s pretty close.”

“
Yeah, except when I feel
things from
not
dead people. Like when you were sick, and I saw your
hallucinations. And when I get feelings from the creatures. I just
don’t understand…”

“
Maybe I died for a
minute. Maybe those beasts are, I dunno, undead?”

“
Like, zombies? Or
vampires or something?” Alessa scrunched her face up. “That’s a bit
of a stretch, don’t you think?”

Isaac shrugged. “I’m
trying to connect the dots here. It’s obviously all related. I’m
just not quite sure
how
.”

“
Let’s just hurry up and
get back. Hopefully someone in Paragon will be able to
help.”

25. BOTCH

Nikhil had known that they’d come for
him sooner or later. He was never in Paragon’s prison for long – a
few weeks, maybe a month or two at most – before the slate of his
mind was wiped clean and painted once more with another pretend
life that he had no choice but to live out.

He didn’t fully trust his sense of
time in this dark, quiet cell, where each day had a tendency to
bleed into the next. But he was fairly certain that he was already
pushing six weeks or so with this latest visit. It was only a
matter of time before he was saddled with another stitch, another
set of memories, another identity to try to sort out from the
rest.

But this time, he had hope that things
might be different. 14 had been teaching him to resist the stitch,
to pick a single strong memory – something real – and focus solely
on that thought until the procedure was over. “The trace,” she’d
called it – because he could use that memory to trace a path back
to what was real.

He usually disposed of 14’s notes,
drowning them in the dredges of his soup or, when all else failed,
swallowing them whole. But these ones he’d saved, tucked away in
the bottom of his shoe. He’d studied them religiously, night after
night, day after day, reciting the words in his head until they
played on repeat in his mind, each line as familiar as a
song.

“
It’s going to hurt –
don’t think about that.”

The pain – that was the
part Nikhil was most worried about. He’d been stitched into many
different lives already, but the common thread that stuck with him
through all of them was the agony of the stitch. There was always a
price for a new life, as any mother could attest. He guessed that
was true for artificial lives as well – only this time,
he
had to pay for the
lives he acquired, even if he didn’t want them. But 14 seemed to
think that the pain would be less if he distracted himself by
thinking about the trace instead. So that would be his
strategy.

“
The trace must be your
only thought.”

This was the key. He had to
concentrate. He had to hold on to every detail of this single
memory. Not a whole life, not a series of events, just one solitary
vibrant thought. If he could do that, he wouldn’t lose his grip on
reality entirely; he could claw his way back out.

“
Just focus on the trace,
and everything else will return.”

Once it was done he’d be
dazed, she’d warned. But he couldn’t rest, couldn’t shut his mind
off until he remembered the truth. The stitch would shatter his
neural pathways like a jackhammer to asphalt, and then it would
pave new paths pointing to the programmed memories. If he went to
sleep, his brain would try to heal itself, sweeping the broken
fragments of his real memories away. Instead, he needed to repair
the original paths, patch them back together before they were lost.
If he could keep rehashing the trace, it would strengthen that one
pathway in his brain and eventually the connecting paths would
relink, and he would be able to recognize truth from fiction. This
was, after all, what happened whenever they deposited him back in
the prison, on a lesser scale – he’d remember the prison itself,
and then other things would start coming back to him. He understood
how this worked. He just needed to
use
it to bring those memories back
sooner rather than later.

“
Don’t get lost wandering
through what they planted. Use the trace as a breadcrumb to find
your way out.”

It was only human nature to be curious
– that was the danger of the stitch. The post-procedure mind was
wounded, weak, searching for answers, seeking a safe retreat. And
the stitch provided what the patient needed – a story to latch
onto. One clear image would peek out of the dark, and the mind
would chase it, following memory after memory straight down the
rabbit hole. And when he came out the other side, as Nikhil well
remembered from his past experiences, his doubts would be erased –
the puzzle pieces would fit, the mind would be soothed, and a new
Nikhil would stand in his place. But if he resisted the temptation
and reached toward the trace instead, 14 had cautioned, he could
clamber up the lattice of truth and find his way to the
surface.