The Rift Uprising (19 page)

“The same drug that helped us cure Alzheimer's has a twin. Instead of helping one remember, it makes sure that one forgets. We also developed another drug that leaves the mind totally open to suggestion. Are you sure you want me to continue?”

I sit up straight. I look her right in those luminescent eyes of hers. She is not going to get away with not telling me the full extent of her complicity. “Yes.”

“When you were brought here at fourteen, the summer before you became a Citadel, you stayed a week. Your families were told it was an ARC prep camp. That was a lie, of course. It was when you were told what you were and what your life would become. You were given an inoculation the first day, the first hour of your arrival. The shot contained an antidote to the genetic suppressor that the nanites had built in when they recoded your DNA. You were told the chip was activated. It wasn't. The shot turned on your altered genes in the controlled environment of the base for obvious reasons. It also contained the drug that left you open to suggestions. When Mr. Seelye spoke, you listened, you believed, and you obeyed. You think it was willpower alone that let you keep the secret of the Citadels and ARC from your loved ones? Let us not mince words. Teenagers would be incapable of such a feat.”

I had always known something about that day was weird. Seelye had basically taken away our free will and we let him, without argument or question. I had always wrestled with keeping my life as a Citadel a secret—we all did. But they must have really done a brainwashing number on us all, because if I was being honest, I would literally rather die than tell my family the truth. Even now, the idea of telling them makes me anxious. A drug that makes us believe anything and then another to make us forget what they wanted us to. It made perfectly disgusting sense and Ezra had been right this whole time. He had seen clearly what I could not because of the drugs and what I can only assume was brainwashing of some sort.

“Most of the memories you have of that experience at the camp are false. For four of those days you were under total control of those drugs. We showed all of you many images, some very romantic and lovely. Some images—well, most of the images, actually—were movies that were sexually explicit. You were monitored to see which of the stimuli affected you most. By that, I mean the sex acts and the acts of romantic love that each of you personally responded to. You were shown a loop of those movies and pictures—and then you were hurt.”

Silence. I look at her. To Edo's credit, she does not look away. “How was I—how were we—hurt?” I'm getting angry again.

“Sometimes you were electrocuted. Sometimes you were beaten. With our medicine and your altered DNA, the bruises and broken bones healed quickly enough so that there was no evidence.” Edo breaks eye contact. Is she ashamed? She damned well should be.

“Broken bones, huh?”

“It was that bad. And we—”

“Damn it! We. Were.
Children
.” I grip the desk. I want to
pick it up and throw it at her. I want to pick her up and throw her through the desk. I want to hurt so many things, and it hurts even more knowing I can't.

“Tell me how to undo it. Tell me there is a way to fix this. Because I am not going to go through the rest of my life without ever being touched. Not when it serves no other purpose than keeping me a perfect soldier. Not when it was done by torturing and abusing me as a child. No—I'm not going to let you do that to me.”

“It's psychological damage. It was done through behavioral therapy. Presumably, it can be undone the same way. In that regard, your research is as good as mine.”

I let that sink in for a moment.
I can
be rewired, just not in the way that Ezra originally thought. But the fact that they had no process to reverse it themselves spoke volumes about what ARC really thought of us.

Something suddenly occurs to me. “Speaking of research,” I ask, “if the implant isn't viable, then how is it we know so much? How are we so smart? How can we speak so many languages? I watched you—you personally—download them into our brains.”

“Again, we used a combination of the drugs. What you thought you saw, you didn't. If you'll recall, we made you study, made you read a number of textbooks on each subject, including foreign languages, that we had already ‘downloaded' under the guise of reinforcement. We said we had to test you to make sure the downloads weren't corrupted. Your genetic enhancement gave you an eidetic memory. In the end, we didn't do anything more than encourage you. You are all self-taught.”

I can't help myself, but I laugh at this point. “Yeah, but learning isn't the same as knowing. Citadels operate within
the parameters that we are experts at things that we aren't. I thought I had the equivalent of a PhD in applied physics. All I have are formulas.”

Edo sighs and the condescension is audible. “I know. That's why all you really ever do is fight.” Her head is so smooth, so flawless and mesmerizing. I wonder if it would break into a thousand pieces if I smashed it hard enough against the desk. I close my eyes briefly to center myself. She has basically accused me of being a thug. I won't give her the satisfaction of being right.

“I am finished with my questions now. I appreciate your . . . honesty. But I need two more things from you.”

Edo's eyes narrow. Her version of the truth is one thing; physical action might well be another. “If it is in my power to give them to you, I will.” She takes her tiny hands and folds them together, propping her elbows on the desk. It's an oddly human gesture, which might not bode well for my requests.

“First off, I need an ample supply of the drug you use to leave people open to the power of suggestion. When I say ‘ample,' I mean a lot. I have no idea how long it's going to take me to recondition my brain and I don't want to have to come here and ask you for more.”

Edo cocks her head to the right as she considers. “Done. And the second thing?”

“I want you to remove the chip from my head. Now. Today.”

Edo blinks. I stare her down. She lowers her arms and places her hands on her lap. She does not like this idea. “That would not be wise, Citadel Ryn.”

I start to nod. I bear down on my jaw. “I know you think all I'm really good for is fighting—”

“That is most certainly not what I think—”

I slam my hand down on the desk and Edo flinches ever so
slightly. “Don't interrupt me. You don't get to interrupt me. You don't get to choose what I think or what I say or when I say it. Are you clear on that?”

Edo does nothing. She just sits there. She doesn't even give me the satisfaction of agreeing.

“You understand that we are much smarter than you give us credit for, don't you?”

Edo shrugs her shoulders. “Some of you are smarter than others.”

I let out a little chuckle. “Maybe so, but
I'm
smart enough to realize that you aren't telling me the whole truth about the implant. I guess you never thought, being built the way you are, that your body language could give you away, but it does. So what could you be lying about? What else could the implant do besides act as a tracker?”

Edo looks down and to the side. In this moment I know that I am right. I had been running possible scenarios since Ezra told me the truth about the chip. What
would I do
if I needed to control a bunch of killer teenagers? Psychological castration, that's one way. But knowing how strong we are, and the damage just one of us could do alone, I would be afraid of what would happen if ten or twenty of us lost control. I would need a way to stop us immediately—
remotely.
In a flash, it hit me.

“It's a fail-safe. It's a kill switch, isn't it?”

Edo doesn't answer me.

“Isn't it?”
I yell.

“It is,” she says finally.

“So how
wise
would it be to keep it in my head?”

“It doesn't work like that. There are very few people who have the authority to use the fail-safe. There are protocols, a quorum—”

Fury sweeps through me like a tornado on an open plain. I can no longer resist. I'm literally shaking with anger, so I take my unsteady hands and finally let loose some of this rage by lifting the desk and slamming it down on the concrete floor so hard I can actually hear the metal warp. Edo jumps. “I don't give a fuck how it works. I don't want to know about the
committee
that gets to decide whether I live or die. I want it out.
Right now
. And if you really feel bad about what you did to us, then you will help me. But maybe you don't feel bad. For all I know, the kill switch was your idea.”

Edo says nothing, admits nothing. She sits there a moment. I can see her thinking. She may well be afraid of me, of what I know, but I am an asset. There is the possibility, and of course I can't be sure about this, that she may even care for me. She also knows that I'm not stupid enough to tell the other Citadels, at least not yet. I won't risk the safety of Battle Ground. Maybe it's the conditioning, or maybe I actually believe, but I will keep the secret. Probably. It's probably the part that has her hesitating.

I realize I'm holding my breath.

“Fine,” she says finally. “I will remove it, but you will have to promise to keep it on you at all times. ARC cannot know that it has been removed or think it is defective.”

“Agreed. But you won't put me out. I want to be frozen locally and I want a mirror. I want to see everything you're doing in there.”

Edo stands and shakes her head, which is so shiny and smooth that it catches the fluorescents above us. Pinpricks of light dance on her skull like a prism in the sun.

“If you are thinking of performing this procedure on your fellow Citadels, I highly recommend that you do not. The implant is extremely volatile.”

I roll my eyes. “At the moment, what I want is to make sure that you don't kill or paralyze me. I don't trust you, Edo, or anyone else in here.”

She gives the briefest of nods and then walks to the door. She opens it and gestures for me to go through to what I can only assume will be an operating theater. My answer seems to have mollified her. But in this moment I know that she isn't as smart as she thinks she is, because I'm lying my ass off.

I am desperate to get home. I think maybe I feel desperate in general. For once, I wish my parents weren't out of town. Pretending that everything is fine would be harder than usual, but just being around them makes me feel safer, more normal. I can't see them . . . but I can see my brother. He's basically in the same place my car is, and I've never slacked in memorizing his schedule. Right now he's in his science lab—physics. I walk up a flight of stairs and go down a hallway. I look through the leaded glass of the door and see Abel at his station taking notes. I open the door and walk over to the teacher.

“Hi, sorry to interrupt,” I whisper to her. “I'm Ryn Whittaker, Abel's sister. I just need to have a quick word with him. Our parents are out of town and I'm in charge. Nothing serious, but time sensitive.”

“Okay. Abel, your sister would like to speak to you.” She
gestures with her hand. She looks young for a teacher. I wonder briefly if she's an ARC employee. I wonder, with a not unrealistic amount of paranoia, if ARC secretly runs everything in Battle Ground.

Abel gets up and I smile a big, fake smile so that he knows right away that nothing is wrong. I walk out the door and Abel follows, closing it behind him. “What's up?” he asks.

Instead of saying anything I just hug him. I hang on to him for dear life.
My sweet little baby brother
,
you are too close to all this craziness. How can I ever really protect you when I have no idea who I'm really supposed to be fighting?

“You're freaking me out, Ryn, and also maybe breaking my ribs. God. Is that, like, a kale thing?”

I let him go and look at him oddly. “What?”

“You know, because it's a superfood. And that hug felt uncomfortably strong.”

“No, I haven't been eating kale. No. I just really missed you. I know it's weird. I guess I had a bad dream last night,” I lie, “and I wanted to see you this morning. Make sure you were okay.”

“You could have texted,” Abel says, clearly unconvinced.

“Yes. I could have done that,” I admit a little awkwardly.

Then Abel pushes through his average teenage boy obliviousness and reaches around to hug me. He doesn't latch on to me like I did to him, but it's a genuine hug—it's got love in it, if not tenderness. He
is
only fourteen. “I'm fine. I miss you, too. I'll see you in a few days at Grandma and Grandpa's house, unless you . . . want me to come home?”

I hear the hesitance, and I know it's because he's having the time of his life over at his best friend's house. Dylan's parents have a lot of money and are rarely home. It's probably like
Lord of the Flies
, except maybe with weed and an XBox.

“No. I'm fine. I'm being stupid. But I'm happy to see your face.” I grab it and give him a kiss on the cheek. “I'll see you later.”

“Okay,” he says, putting his hand on the door. “Just, you know, text or whatever if you need me or want to talk or are scared of something. I can be home in, like, ten minutes from Dylan's house.”

“Thanks, bud. You're a good guy.” I turn and practically run down the hallway. It was a stupid thing for me to do. I'm too raw. My head hurts. I'm confused. I guess I panicked and needed something familiar. But it wasn't cool. Now that I have the implant out, things are more dangerous. Edo could tell Applebaum. Anyone close to me is at greater risk. I drive home with a feeling equal parts dread and terror.
I have no idea what I've just done
.