Under My Skin (23 page)

He sighed, long and deep. “The catalyst had to prepare our brains for the transfer and ensure our minds didn’t suppress the foreign consciousness. Thanks to the Guild, you and I have been infected by a genetically engineered virus.”

The offering at the initiation ceremony was nothing more than a cocktail of death to
pollute
us. No wonder no one was allowed to warn us. All the Guild’s plans depended on us taking that offering.

After talking for a bit longer, a balding man in a white lab coat came into the conference room to give me an injection of clear fluid. Once finished, he checked me over and said gruffly, “Not sure how this stuff will help you, Miss Sullivan.” He shrugged. “We’re just lowering the levels of your infection, but it’s better than nothing.”

“So there’s no cure?” I whispered.

“For now,” the man replied. “For the longest time, we didn’t know much. Then Quinn showed up after the Guild had taken him. He volunteered everything he’d learned. We really needed someone like him for our experiments.”

My skin crawled at the thought of a virus swimming under my skin. I couldn’t help thinking about my father and all the illnesses that had swept over Myria. So many people had died due to RF9 and KB12. And now I had a virus in me that allowed the Guild to take over my mind. What kind of crazy person thought up this kind of stuff?

Quinn directed me to get up. “We’ll have to make some kind of arrangement to get you more doses, but for now, we need to get you back. If the General wakes up, we’re in trouble. We’ve already spent too much time here.”

“What about the training?” I asked. How could I help myself if I didn’t start soon?

“We’ll get to it next time. We need to maintain your cover and get you back to the estate before the shift change in the morning.”

I nodded and rubbed the sore spot on my arm. The place where they’d stuck me tingled. A sensation of lightheadedness hit when I took a step toward the door, but it receded after a few steps.

But what I’d interpreted as a foggy head was the subtle hints of fear along my spine. The kind of fear that only came at a particular time.

I stopped in the middle of the hallway and a few guards ran into me. Quinn glanced my way, eyes filled with concern.

“No,” I mumbled. “Not right now.”

With a single hiss-like command from Felicity, a blindfold flipped over my head to cover my eyes. Soldiers scrambled around me. The faint crackle of las-guns activating. All the while, I shouldered the heavy burden of keeping him asleep. My legs wobbled at the sheer weight of his will, the power of General Dagon’s mind to draw itself into my consciousness.

“Not now,” I repeated. A layer of sweat dampened my palms, but I continued to clench them, gripping them tightly as if they’d keep me in check.

What did Quinn tell me to do if something like this happened? I couldn’t remember for a while.

The numbers.
I had to give him numbers in case I couldn’t touch my mouth.

The pressure increased—blossoming open to spread across my brow and slice across my eyes. With every inch, it grew. A fire burned my skin. He wanted out. He wanted me.

I shut my eyes tighter. “359.”

“359,” Quinn repeated.

“359.”

Pain coursed through my scalp and raced toward my face. With each ticking second, the pain increased ten-fold. I was a bow stretching to the point of breaking.

“I can’t do it,” I breathed. “I can’t…”

I heard Felicity through the blinding heat of agony. “Prepare the Lund. Stun setting.”

“No!” Quinn snapped. “Lights out. Now.”

Lights out? No sooner had I opened my mouth to ask, than a shower of white electricity shot out of the Lund Bracelet. My muscles spasmed. My teeth ground together. The never-ending voltage sent me shuddering unconscious to the ground.

A faint chill spread through my clothes into my back. Why was I so cold?

Incomplete thoughts swam in and out of my head: the Resistance, my visit, the Lund Bracelet. I tried to get my bearings, but focus was difficult to grasp. The cold all around me didn’t make it any easier. Faint memories of the transfer chamber came to mind. My hands were tied behind my back.

Someone came to my side. I sensed their warmth.

“Are you ready to recite them?” said a man’s voice—Quinn’s.

I licked my dry lips and tried to remember. He wanted something important from me.

His voice sounded more urgent. “You need to give me what I want. General, you’re not one to hold back like this.”

He’d called me Dagon. They thought I might be him.

I searched the murky corners of my mind until three digits became clear. “359,” I blurted. My voice sounded distant.

Quinn sighed. “You scared me for a bit there.”

“You and me both,” I mumbled.

The trip back to the transport ship was like my trip to the headquarters. Somewhat silent and blinded. Even though I’d proven my identity, they still didn’t take any chances. I only had one dose of the antivirus, and the General had tried to make an appearance, so I didn’t blame them.

My entire body felt weakened—broken. If he came back again I wouldn’t be able to hold him back. In the process of saving me, they’d left the door wide open. But they’d managed to keep our secret. I hoped.

A big question came to mind on the way back. I directed it to Quinn, who I sensed was near. “How do you plan to free the Water Bearers?” I asked.

It was Felicity who answered first. “At this point, we’ve tried our best to intercede before the transfer ceremony. With all their defenses in place, our success rate’s been low, way too low,” she grumbled.

“Why not find a way to bring down the Prime Minister?” I asked.

I heard a laugh from Felicity and the other guards. “Using what army?” one man said. “Adam Lyons—Falcon, or whatever name he’s using now, is much more careful than he used to be ten years ago with tougher defenses and better tech. He also has more control over the network, and, therefore, over the general population.”

Quinn chimed in. “The only way we can do this is to make people aware of these atrocities and bring everyone together to act against the Guild.”

“Been there, tried it, and failed,” another man said.

“The Black Riots,” I whispered. Not long after RF9 had decimated the corners of the world, the remaining countries locked down their borders. That was the beginning of control for many places, including the country that would become Myria. Hundreds of years before I was born, the people in the larger cities poured into the streets and fought against the police. According to my book, it was over the lack of medical care for the sick. What I hadn’t known when I’d first read the book was the true reason why the people had rioted. Someone had managed to get the word out. And it was that one seed that grew into the Black Riots. Over a thousand people died and my country was never the same again.

“They buried the truth then,” the man continued. “They have much more control now. Any attempts to release information to the general public will be futile.”

They continued to talk for the rest of the transport ship ride. They’d made so many attempts, all of them useless.

They’d tried to rescue the Water Bearers before the auctions, a few here and there. But it was not enough to slow down the flow of bodies to the Guild members. They’d tried to prevent people from attending the testing, but the Guild simply changed the locations of the Testing Centers. How could such a vicious cycle be stopped?

I curled into the seat as sleep tugged at me. I didn’t want to sleep. Not after what had happened. But I couldn’t sense the General coming, so I felt secure to fall into slumber just this one time.

The long night drifted into a day I never saw. I’d made it back to the estate safely, but, in the end, the General owned the day and the next day as well. When I finally woke up, I drifted into seeing the outside of the estate. The sky had a purple haze, and a chilly wind swept across the lawn, the first signs of the evening. I yearned for the time I’d missed.

Beyond the gardens, in the open field in front of the barracks, the General used my body to pace back forth across the lawn. His personal guards sweated through their training exercises in spite of the cold.

“You’re all weak,” he barked at the men doing push-ups. “You have no focus, no drive to perform your exercises as expected from your commanding officer. But all that ends now.”

He loomed over them as sweat dripped off their backs. When one of them didn’t perform as expected, he took my foot and pushed down on his shoulders.

Over the past few days, I’d learned Dagon had worked with the military to protect the northern border from attacks. I had to admit, the General was good at what he did. For the first offensive, as he called it, he placed his troops to knock out hidden outposts. He then pushed the invaders into a position that was favorable for Myrian soldiers.

He accomplished all of this using my body. Just like Alphonse had wanted.

“It’s mine now,”
he liked to remind me
. “I will go to the front lines soon to help protect an important site. But in order to do that, I need to strengthen this broken body of yours.”

He referred to the las-gun wound on my back. The blue streaks continued to stretch toward my hips. The wound hurt every time I rolled over in my sleep or when I bent over too fast.

Des had told me I’d have to watch out for other symptoms. But what would they be? Did all of this have to do with Quinn’s warning—that two minds shouldn’t inhabit the same body? Maybe the body could tell that the mind was burdened and tried to fight back. Could it be a countermeasure to the infection of a foreign consciousness?

I thought about all these things as Quinn went through the exercises for the General. Quinn marched in place and practiced firing his weapons like the rest of the men. All the while, we worked around each other as if the other didn’t exist.

Even though we had a system in place, sneaking out of the estate wasn’t an easy task. The General had many orders to fulfill and sites to oversee, but since the transformation wasn’t complete, Rebecca continued to watch me with a wary eye.

Like before, I had to be blindfolded and handcuffed for another trip to the Resistance Headquarters. Having Quinn guide me to the transport ship was one of the things I enjoyed the most. He could’ve held me away from him at arm’s length to help me through the forest, but instead, he held my hand. I preferred the sound of our voices instead of the night animals. To end the silence between us, I asked him a question.

“What will I learn this time?”

“You’ll get another injection. Learn more about how to act like the Guild.”

“What was it like when you had someone in your head?”

“So you want to know about my adventures before I joined the military?” He sighed. “Well, it’s not a time I remember fondly. My parents had been members of the Resistance who’d settled here in Myria to provide intel. Pete and I had lived a good life on a farm until I was tested and the Guild auctioned me off. I was sold to a man named Franklin. A rich merchant from the northeast. Like all the others, he’d bought his way into the Guild—into their system of lies.”

I stumbled, but he caught me and kept going. “I wonder what price someone would be willing to pay to hurt other people. Why don’t the merchants expose the Guild?”

“It’s an exclusive club, Tate. Everyone who has any inkling of power within Myria knows about them and wants in.”

“But it makes no sense. Wouldn’t the people who knew the big secret but aren’t Guild members not want their children to be tested?”

He laughed. “You still believe in the human race. I like that about you. But that’s not the way the real world works. If you had the chance to live forever, to keep all your money and continue to be young and wealthy for the rest of your life, would you be willing to keep a dark secret?”

I heard the hum of the ship. We’d reached the pickup point.

He asked me one final question. “Have you met a Guild member yet who had regrets?”

I didn’t answer him while we boarded the transport ship. Quinn helped me settle into my seat. At first, I was alone, but he returned soon enough at my side.

“Do you need anything?” he whispered in my ear.

A shiver passed through me. If he only knew.

He took my hand, intertwining my fingers with his. As much as I wanted to ask what was going on between us the past few days, I didn’t want to ruin it. Was I his girlfriend? What kind of relationship did we have?

“You don’t have to hold my hand if you don’t want to do it,” I murmured. The blindfold had given me a bit of courage I hadn’t had before. Looking into someone else’s eyes at a time like this tended to make it all the more difficult to reveal your soul.

“We’re not at the compound,” he said. “No prying eyes.”

He was looking at me. He had to be. My stomach quaked. Every nerve ending jumped and fired wildly.

“I’m just saying if you don’t like me—” I began.

“Do you remember the day when you met Lieutenant Kelping for the first time?” he interjected.

“Yes,” I whispered. So much had changed since then.

“That was when I saw a fire in you for the first time. The spark of rebellion.” He brought my fingertips up to his mouth. I sensed his smile, warm and comforting. “That was when I began to fall for you.”

My heart jumped into my throat and collapsed back down again. I tried to let go of his hand and draw mine back to my mouth, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Don’t. I’m looking at you right now and you’re perfect. Don’t you dare cover up what I’m about to kiss.”

He didn’t even give me a chance to anticipate what was coming. It just happened. He lightly kissed my forehead, his lips warming my skin. His mouth slowly trailed down the bridge of my nose to my lips. A brief brush of his lips against mine became something more as our heads tilted and he drew me closer. I leaned against him and reveled in the exquisite intensity of the moment.

By the time we parted, I was breathless. All this time I’d forgotten I wore a blindfold. My hand reached up again to touch my lips, but he stopped me.