Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) (38 page)

Trust me – we’re listening. And
knowing that you appreciated our work will undoubtedly make any
author’s day.

Thank you for all of your
support,

Samantha

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Deep, thank you for playing so many
roles in my life, from best friend to husband to editor. Your
critique has contributed much to this series, and you’re the only
one who will call me out when I’ve written something ridiculous or
cheesy. Thank you for all of your support, in my writing, and in
life.

To my beta readers, thank you for your
patience and undying encouragement in getting through the early
drafts. Your keen eyes for typos and plot inconsistencies are much,
much appreciated, and your enthusiasm for the story even more so. I
couldn’t have done it without you.

To Gio, my little feline love, thank
you for being my constant companion and devoted assistant. Even
though you assist most in causing me backaches by leaving no room
on my lap for the computer, there’s no other companion I’d rather
have for the many long hours of writing we’ve shared.

And finally, to the readers. Thank
you, thank you, thank you, a hundred thousand times over. I’m
beyond honored that you chose to spend your time with Alessa and
Isaac. Thank you for giving me someone to share their story
with.

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR

Samantha Durante lives in Westchester
County, New York with her husband, Sudeep, and her cat, Gio.
Formerly an engineer at Microsoft, Samantha left the world of
software in 2010 to pursue her entrepreneurial dreams and a
lifelong love of writing. A graduate of the University of
Pennsylvania’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management &
Technology, Samantha is currently working full time for her company
Medley Media Associates as a freelance business writer and
communications consultant. The Stitch Trilogy is her debut
series.

Visit
www.samanthadurante.com
to join the Stitch community and sign up for updates about
upcoming Stitch Trilogy releases.

Read on for a Sneak
Preview of

STUCK

The electrifying final
installment of the Stitch Trilogy…

EPILOGUE:
TRAITOR

It wasn’t working. Lizzie had tried
for two solid months to convince someone – anyone – that they
should consider a peace with Paragon. But no one wanted to listen.
They just wanted blood.

On the one hand, Lizzie understood –
the Engineers had made some choices that were… questionable, to say
the least. Secrecy, lies, mind control through the stitching and
the drugs, mass murder…

But that was also
reductive. The Engineers had done some terrible things, yes – but
had they really had a choice? Lizzie didn’t want to hear it at
first, either, but the more she thought about it, the more it
seemed that the Engineers just did what needed to be done. Everyone
was going to die
anyway
. Instead, the Engineers had saved the entire human
species
from itself, had
given humanity a place where they could live comfortably, securely,
and in harmony with the world around them for a long and prosperous
future.

And of course the people weren’t
satisfied with what they’d come up with. No one was ever satisfied.
But the Engineers had only tried to make it work, even if their
methods were misguided. Yes, they were controlling the populace
against their will, but that was only for their own
good.

Rubbing one of the scars
on her temple, Lizzie remembered what the people did when left to
their own devices – remembered their true nature. The Engineers
were only protecting them from themselves. They really
did
mean
well.

And at least the Engineers weren’t
ruling the people through fear. They’d given them food,
entertainment – even drugs – to make them happy. What more could
anyone want?

The rebels
thought
they wanted
freedom, thought they wanted a say. But they’d all seen what had
become of the “free” world – war, poverty, devastation. If that was
the price of freedom, it was something Lizzie wasn’t sure she
wanted.

The only way they could
avoid the same fate as their predecessors was to give up that
supposed “freedom,” put aside their individual aspirations, and
work together toward a collective good. They needed to put
society
before
themselves, for once.

And that was exactly what
the Engineers were proposing. They were giving everyone an
opportunity to try something different, something new and hopefully
better. And sure, they’d made mistakes – the Engineers were only
human, after all. But they’d owned up to those mistakes, and
were
still
trying
to set them right.

The same couldn’t be said for the
rebels.

For eight weeks now, the rebel force
had been diligently toiling away under Regina’s command, dashing
out to the woods and the city for training expeditions, plotting
and scheming to take Paragon down; each tiny cog churning away in
the well-oiled machine of war her mother had built.

And not one of them would
stop for even a
moment
to consider what they were actually fighting against. What
would happen when they returned to Paragon to fight? How much
collateral damage would they inflict?

How could the rebels
attack the city, knowing full well that innocents would die along
with Paragon’s leaders? The others may not realize it, but Lizzie
knew that that could be utterly detrimental to their future, to
their viability as a species. Everyone in Paragon had been chosen.
Everyone deserved to live. Everyone
needed
to live.

And there were other
considerations as well. Whispers raged throughout Raptor about the
monsters that plagued the soldiers on their missions into the
woods, along with horrifying stories from civilians who’d witnessed
what had happened the few times those monstrous things had somehow
gotten
inside
Paragon’s gates. Would the rebels tear down Paragon’s walls
and set those harrowing creatures loose on the compound?

There was too much at stake. Lizzie
had to do something to stop it. But how?

She’d tried to reason with the rebels,
tried to make them see sense – but they were too enamored by
Regina’s visions of vengeance to listen.

No, reason never stood a chance
against her mother’s machinations. Lizzie had spent her entire life
watching Regina weave her tangled webs, somehow manipulating
everyone around her to do exactly as she wanted, half the time
without them even realizing it.

Regina had a way – that much Lizzie
had to admit. It’d driven her mad as a child, watching everyone
bend to her mother’s will. Somehow Lizzie herself had been immune
to Regina’s charms – she guessed she simply knew her mother too
well, knew her in a way the guarded rebel leader never allowed of
anyone else. That was the magic of being a daughter – her mother
couldn’t hide from her if she tried.

But how could Lizzie ever convince the
rebels to return to the place that her mother had so skillfully
twisted them against?

There was only one way she could think
of – she would have to unmask Regina for the master puppeteer she
was.

In Regina’s exploits to keep the
rebels under her wing, there was one thing she hadn’t considered,
one loyalty she’d never questioned: Lizzie’s. And that would be her
downfall.

Lizzie loved her mother – she truly
did – but the Engineers had helped her see that sometimes things
were more important than one’s individual allegiances. Sometimes a
person had to give up what they most cared for to do the right
thing – just as all the Engineers had done. And Lizzie was willing
to sacrifice her mother’s love if it meant the survival of the
human race.

Lizzie knew Regina was lying to the
rebels. She knew Regina was using their fear of the virus to
manipulate them into fighting instead of fleeing. And Lizzie was
going to expose her deceit.

Lizzie had overhead Alicia and Regina
discussing the dying infants. Even though Regina kept warning the
rebels about the virus, Lizzie knew Regina suspected that they were
all immune. But she’d convinced Alicia to keep quiet about this,
claiming that it wasn’t safe to tell everyone until they knew for
sure it was true.

Really, though, Lizzie knew Regina had
her own reasons. If the rebels understood that they had a choice –
that they could be safe from the virus away from Raptor, and
Paragon, and all of it – some of them might just decide to leave.
Regina needed to make sure that didn’t happen – and so she’d kept
her suspicions about immunity hidden from the rebels.

But Lizzie was going to tell. And once
she did, she would take the disillusioned rebels with her back to
Paragon and put this war to an end.

There was only one person standing in
her way – Isaac.

For now, though, that was under
control. Lizzie had something over Isaac, a bargaining chip he
wasn’t willing to risk.

Isaac had heard the Developer’s
revelations, and he’d quickly realized the same thing Lizzie had:
that there was something special about the girl. She was too young
to have received the vaccine through the civil service program as
the Developer had described, and yet somehow she’d survived
anyway.

Lizzie had not told Regina that the
Engineers were behind the virus, and she had no intentions of doing
so. She knew Regina would only use the information to fuel the
rebels’ fire.

But Isaac couldn’t keep a
secret like that for long, Lizzie knew. And if he told the rebels,
they wouldn’t care
what
Regina had done – they’d want retribution, and
Lizzie’s plans to save them all would be ruined.

So she’d made sure that Isaac had
understood what would happen if Regina found out about the girl and
the vaccine.

Knowledge of the vaccine
would only confirm Regina’s suspicions about immunity. And it
wouldn’t be long before she realized that the vaccine didn’t work
on the very young – Regina would surmise that obviously that would
have been the first thing the Engineers tried. And so she’d
recognize that they needed something else to survive, a
true
cure to save the
little ones from a horrible death.

And the child was the key to that
cure.

“
If you don’t want to see
her turned into a science experiment,” Lizzie had warned, “You’ll
keep quiet about what you know.”

Isaac had agreed, reluctantly. But she
knew it was only a matter of time before his conscience got the
better of him.

The problem was, Isaac wouldn’t stay
silent for long. He’d probably already told Alessa – and Alessa
would have told her sister. The threat to the girl would convince
Isaac to keep them in line for now. But not forever.

And Lizzie couldn’t let the child fall
into Regina’s hands. If she was going to turn the girl over to
anyone, it would be the Engineers. They were the ones with the
knowledge and equipment to do this right, to find a real cure. They
were humanity’s only hope.

But the minute those three – Isaac,
Alessa, and Janie – realized that Lizzie intended to bring the girl
back to Paragon, they would spill everything they knew. Then there
would be no chance for peace. Paragon would be forced to crush the
rebellion. And the entire survival of their species could be put in
jeopardy.

Lizzie couldn’t let that happen. She
would turn the rebels against Regina, and she would deliver them –
and the girl – to the Engineers. Regardless of what it cost her
personally, she would do her part to ensure a future for her
people.

But first, she needed to get rid of
Isaac.