Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) (24 page)

Phoenix got the impression he was
tiring of her questions, but she couldn’t help herself – she wanted
answers. “But why did you need the entertainment at all, if you had
this technology? If you were having trouble keeping everyone under
control, couldn’t you just have changed their minds to make them
behave how you wanted? The Doctor told me about the drugs in the
food… It’s not really much different.”

He shifted his weight
uncomfortably. “Well… the technology was in the experimental stage
when we acquired it, and it’s still not quite
perfected
. Sometimes… things go
wrong.” He cleared his throat aggressively. “It was too big a risk
to use it on the population at large, or to allow those it’d been
used on to go unmonitored.” He finished with a scowl that made it
clear that the topic was closed.

Phoenix was extremely curious as to
what kind of negative side effects they were seeing, but she didn’t
want to press her luck. Instead, she asked about another aspect
that’d piqued her interest.

“
I know the technology was
stolen by our government from our enemies… But how did
you
actually get it?
Wasn’t it, like, protected or anything?” she asked.

“
Of course.” He rolled his
eyes. “But the Developer… he’s very skilled. He hacked into the
government databases to retrieve it. It was almost child’s play for
him – after all, he was only a teenager when he created the world’s
largest and most sophisticated social media platform,” he
explained.

“
I didn’t know that,”
Phoenix responded, and for some reason she felt ashamed, stupid.
She looked away from him as she said it, and he seemed to
notice.

A hint of a smile played at his lips,
but his eyes were still unreadable, still cold as polished stone.
“Oh yes, he’s brilliant, with computers at least.” His voice
cracked again, and he cleared his throat. “Never even graduated
high school, you know. Earned his first billion by the time he
turned 18.”

That
was
impressive, Phoenix thought. But
why did it feel like he was holding this information over her, like
he was using it to somehow prove his own superiority? She tried to
deflect. “And how did you meet?”

He puffed out his chest ever so
slightly. “Even ‘geniuses’ need help. He reached out to me, when he
was planning –” he seemed to catch himself. Averting his eyes
briefly, he coughed exaggeratedly before continuing, “– when we
were getting everything set up here.”

Phoenix nodded. Again, the silence
seemed to stretch before them. He’d been lingering by the door the
entire conversation, and he remained there still, shifting his
weight almost aggressively and watching her with those
eyes.

Phoenix noticed her palms were
sweating, and she wiped them on the crisp white sheets. She felt
unsettled, restless. All of a sudden, she realized she wanted him
gone.

“
If you don’t mind,”
Phoenix muttered, barely above a whisper, “I think I need to rest
now.” She lay back in her bed and pulled the sheets up
tight.

“
As you wish,” he
rasped.

The door whooshed shut behind him, and
Phoenix felt the tension in her body release as her heart began to
slow. Now she just needed to figure out why.

27. APPROACH

Alessa’s body throbbed from head to
toe by the time they reached Paragon’s walls. The muscles in her
legs were hard and sore, and her feet ached right down to the
bones. It’d taken five and a half days of strenuous hiking, from
first light to dusk every single day. They’d covered some 140 miles
of wilderness, but they’d made it.

They didn’t have much of a choice but
to hurry, what with the creatures constantly on their tail.
Miraculously, they’d somehow managed to avoid any confrontations
throughout their trek. Occasionally Alessa had heard noises from
the woods beside them, or caught a glimpse of a large shadow pacing
up ahead. But for some reason, the beasts had left them alone.
Isaac was on edge, never quite believing that they were truly safe.
But Alessa had decided to just be grateful when life threw a bone
her way – it certainly didn’t happen often enough, that was for
sure.

Besides, she had other things on her
mind at the moment. Joe, for one. Ever since they’d left Raptor,
he’d come to dominate her thoughts once again, much to Alessa’s
frustration.

Alessa had hoped that she’d finally
put her feelings for Joe to rest after a couple blissful days with
Isaac hidden away at their new refuge, but as soon as her lungs had
tasted the fresh air outside the base, her mind was flooded once
again with this nagging obsession that she couldn’t seem to
quell.

And beyond that, Alessa had been
working on a plan.

Isaac had actually given her the idea,
when he was trying to convince her back at Raptor that everything
would be okay. “It’s not like we can just run away,” he’d said.
“What about Janie? You’re just gonna leave her there?”

He was right – she
couldn’t run away without Janie. But as soon as Janie was by her
side once again, that was
exactly
what she was considering.

Alessa trailed behind Isaac, fiddling
with the heavy straps on her backpack as they circled Paragon’s
looming gray walls, searching for the spot where they’d found their
supply packs when they’d first escaped from the compound. His broad
shoulders hunched with exhaustion as he trudged through the thick
underbrush, and it dawned on Alessa how heavily this mission – this
whole rebellion – had weighed on Isaac. On both of them,
really.

Alessa had struggled with doubts from
the beginning – doubts in her own abilities, doubts in the rebels’
chances, doubts in all of their odds for survival. But the past
week had finally made things clear. As much as she wanted revenge
for Joe, and for the months and years she’d lost to Paragon and its
drugs and prisons and dramas, she realized that sometimes you had
to choose your battles.

And this one just wasn’t worth the
risk.

Isaac glanced back over his shoulder
with a reassuring smile and a cobalt sparkle in his eye. “Almost
there,” he promised.

Alessa forced a hopeful grin to her
lips. She knew she should be happy – they were almost there, had
almost completed their mission – but inside all she could see was
the image of Isaac’s pale, drained face, a cold droplet of sweat
trickling from his fevered brow as he lie wasted and
dying.

Alessa had almost given up that day,
almost forsaken life itself, drowning as she was in the stifling
misery of that tent. And she’d realized since that she just
couldn’t stomach the possibility of losing Isaac, or Janie for that
matter.

And her short reprieve
from rebel life while tucked away at Raptor hadn’t helped, either.
Those days had given Alessa a taste of what things
could
be like in a world
that wasn’t dominated by Paragon and the struggles of the
resistance – and she
wanted
that life, desperately. The problem was, the
longer she hung around with the rebels, the more likely it was that
she – or someone she loved – would die before they got
it.

A deep, weary sigh escaped Alessa’s
lips as her eyes lingered on the man hiking in front of her, his
chestnut hair glimmering in the late afternoon sun. The thought of
spending a single day without Isaac wrung her heart into a million
pieces; she could never survive without him. How would she ever
keep him safe? And Janie – she was the only family Alessa had left.
She couldn’t lose Janie either.

Alessa’s loved ones had always been
her top priority – their safety, their happiness, their survival.
And she was finally beginning to understand that despite the hopes
she’d harbored for so long, fighting back against Paragon simply
was not going to further that cause.

After all, Alessa was only one person.
She simply didn’t have the power to protect Janie and Isaac against
the full force of Paragon’s wrath, especially not in an all-out
war. The only way she could guarantee their survival – and
therefore, she admitted, her own – was if she could find some way
to remove them from the situation altogether.

Peeking at the dark, towering barrier
to her side, it occurred to Alessa that it should probably feel
weird to be on this side of Paragon’s walls – the outside. At one
time, the idea of leaving Paragon had terrified her. She and Janie
and Isaac had grown up there, and despite their hardships, at least
the compound was familiar, secure. There had been so many unknowns
beyond Paragon’s gates.

But Alessa was no longer worried about
their odds of making it outside the compound, once they put enough
distance between themselves and Paragon at least. She’d already
proven to herself that she could survive out in the world, even
with the virus and the creatures at her heels. She and Isaac and
Janie could make it on their own. She was sure of it.

Alessa breathed deep and let the cool
winter air wash through her, an invigorating chill seeping through
her limbs. The oxygen tasted of clarity.

After everything Alessa had been
through, every challenge she’d surmounted, every struggle she’d
endured, she realized that it all boiled down to this – this one
moment when all the puzzle pieces fit together and she finally
understood what her heart had been trying to tell her all
along:

She could
not
get further
embroiled in the rebels’ fight if it meant putting Janie and Isaac
at risk. She needed to get them out of here, before it was too
late.

She was resolved.

Ahead of her, Isaac paused for a
moment, readjusting the weight of the pack on his back. He
tightened the straps, shook out the fatigue from his limbs, and
soldiered on.

A soldier, Alessa thought – that was
the epitome of who Isaac was. Strong, willing, honorable. And
dedicated, that most of all. Alessa couldn’t breathe a word of her
plans to him – not until it was too late for him to intervene,
anyway. He wasn’t going to like it, but one day he would thank
her.

Hopefully.

Now she just needed to figure out how
to get Janie on board…

Her
sense of duty was almost as bad as Isaac’s. It was sure to
prove more than a challenge to convince Janie to desert.

Alessa certainly had her own
reservations about ditching the rebellion – she wasn’t about to
pretend she didn’t. She knew the people of Paragon needed help, and
the idea of abandoning the resistance racked her with guilt. But
Alessa had done what she could, she reasoned, and she’d done more
than most. At some point she had to draw the line. At some point
she had to put herself first. Wasn’t that only fair?

Hadn’t she earned that
right?

Alessa just
couldn’t
leave the fate
of the two people she loved most to chance, not any longer. She was
going to do whatever she needed to get them out of there and bring
them somewhere secure, somewhere far away from Paragon and the
rebels and the bloody mess that was sure to ensue.

Maybe she could find a way to trick
Janie into cooperating. After all, Janie had done the same to
Alessa during her escape from Paragon – Alessa owed her
one.

“
This is it, right?” Isaac
called.

Interrupted in her plotting, Alessa
looked up flush-faced and took in the clearing around her, turning
to hide the redness in her cheeks – it was hard to keep anything
from Isaac, especially something this big.

She spied the large drainage pipe
jutting out of a gravel-lined ditch, the dense gnarled trees, the
thick bushes lining the sewer opening. It looked different in the
light of day, but this was definitely the spot.

Over to her right was the high ridge
where Isaac and Alessa had huddled in the dark waiting for Janie to
appear, only to discover that she’d never planned to come. Alessa
could still picture Isaac’s drawn face, pale in the shimmering
moonlight, as he read the letter from Regina breaking the
news.

“
Yeah, this is it,” she
affirmed, suppressing the anger that threatened at the memory of
the betrayal contained in Regina’s words.

Alessa had learned her
lesson that night. As much as she might believe in the rebels’
cause, there were some things that were more important to her
–
people
were
more important to her. And Regina had made it clear when she kept
Janie behind that Alessa and Regina didn’t see eye to eye on that
point. As much as she admired the rebel leader, something deep
inside of Alessa just didn’t trust Regina to keep the people Alessa
cared about safe. Regina had succeeded in life because she was
ruthless – Alessa knew she wouldn’t hesitate to put Janie or Isaac
in danger if she saw an opportunity for victory.

And Alessa just couldn’t abide by
that. She’d play along with Regina’s games while she had to, but
when the time was right, she was done. And she wasn’t about to let
her sister out of her sight again.

A flash of concern crossed Isaac’s
face. “Is everything okay, Less?” he asked gently.