The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 11
“We have reason to believe,” the woman answered, “that this regime has been amassing followers amongst illegals for years.”
A squeak followed the declaration.
It belonged to Jane, who hadn’t made a sound all day.
Everyone in the room looked at her, like she might follow the squeak with actual words. Instead, her attention returned to the disassembled device, her choppy hair falling in her face. She never tied it back or tucked it out of the way. Eden had to repress the urge to pull it back for her and tie it into a ponytail.
“They’ve been building in number and strength amongst hidden communities. Confirming what we already know.”
“Which is what?” the reporter asked.
“Off-the-grid individuals are a serious threat to this country.”
Off-the-grid individuals.
Eden looked at Cassian’s pinkie—the broad bed of his neatly trimmed nail.
“Which means we will urge all businesses and institutions to conduct proper retinal scans.”
Barrett flipped back to Concordia Chicago, which ran an interview with Oswin Brahm that had played late last night. He was safe. Alive. Clean but banged up as he hid in an undisclosed location and addressed the nation like he had twenty-one years ago when Interitus first struck. Back then, he’d been grief-stricken but composed. A beacon of calm in a storm of chaos. This time, anger radiated off him in palpable waves. His eyes, laser beams of fury aimed directly at the camera, as if this second attack had snapped his composure in half. His hotel had been reduced to a pile of ash. Too many of his guests were dead. Interitus would not get away with it.
Barrett flipped to Concordia World.
Tickertape scrolled on the bottom of the screen.
All citizens abroad must report to the nearest embassy.
“What?” Jack exclaimed, his hands gripping the back of the sofa. “Why?”
As the news anchor answered his question—America’s Board wanted everyone home and accounted for—he tried calling Annette again, his fingers fumbling over the buttons.
It didn’t work.
Until then, Eden had always thought the Forresters were in the better position. Ellery and her mother were in Rome. Sightseeing. Jack was here, trying his best to help Eden and her parents take down the man who threatened them. But now? He was separated from his family in a time of national crisis, unable to reach them—the government on high alert for the tiniest hint of terrorist activity. His daughter, oblivious to the fact that she was a weapon created by the very regime the press secretary swore they would eradicate. Which meant authorities were as much a threat to his daughter’s safety as Interitus, even if their intentions differed.
With a muttered expletive, Jack let himself out onto the deck and slammed the sliding glass door behind him. Jane let out another squeak and clapped her hands over her ears as Jack yelled at the sky—a great war cry of frustration—then pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket.
All of them stared.
Until Dr. Norton gave his throat a clear. “Who would like toast with their omelets?”
“Two pieces. Extra butter,” Barrett said.
“Alaric?” Dr. Norton pointed his attention at Eden’s father.
The disorienting name made Eden want to clap her hands over her ears like Jane. His name was Alexander. Alexander Pruitt. She was Eden Pruitt. They were the Pruitts. And other than the boy sitting next to her, she didn’t want this to be her life. She missed Erik and the ocean and school and the neat and tidy existence that used to be hers. She missed it all so much that she wanted to scream at the sky like Jack.
Dad shook his head listlessly. “I’m not hungry.”
“It’s important to get—”
“No thank you,” Dad said, more firmly this time. “I’d like to go rest, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Dr. Norton set down the knife he’d been using to chop peppers, then came into the living room to wheel her father to the guest room.
The fact that he didn’t object to being wheeled carved a pit in Eden’s stomach.
“I think I’d like to rest, too,” Mom said, giving Eden a brave smile. She grabbed the crutches propped against the couch. And when she hobbled past, she brushed her fingers through Eden’s hair. Her crutches tapped down the hallway as gravel popped in the distance.
A car was approaching.
Cassian didn’t hear it.
But Eden did.
So did Jane and Barrett.
All three of them looked out the window at the same time.
Cleo’s Tesla came into view.
Eden stood. Cassian looked up at her, then finally heard what the rest of them already had. He joined Eden as she let herself out the front and Cleo parked her car.
“You’re alive!” she exclaimed, slamming her door shut and marching toward them like a frazzled mother hen. “Every college student on campus is freaking out like these missing celebrities are their favorite aunts and uncles. Meanwhile, I had no idea if you two were still living. How’d you get out?”
Eden told her the story. The whole sordid tale.
And when she finished, Cassian shared with Cleo what Eden had yet to share with her parents.
“He said they were a gift for the Monarch.”
“The Monarch,” Cleo repeated. “That name again.”
“Is it familiar?” Eden asked.
Cleo wedged her front left tooth between the pad of her thumb and her black-painted thumbnail. “Yeah, but I’m not sure why.”
Behind them, the door flew open.
Barrett stood on the other side with a Christmas-morning smile stretched wide across his face. “You guys need to come see this!”
17
Inside, Dr. Norton and Jack were back—standing in the living room, staring open-mouthed at a holographic image projecting from the device Jane had reassembled.
Eden recoiled.
“Start it over,” Barrett said, his voice brimming with excitement.
Jane pushed something that made the projection go away.
And Eden felt a strong, visceral urge to smack the device out of Jane’s hand as pieces of last night flashed through her mind. Mordecai groping her legs. The gun in his holster beneath his suit coat. Her finger on the trigger. Searing pain and the horrible realization that she was going to do it—she was going to shoot Cassian. She was going to shoot her mother.
Don’t touch it. Stop messing with it.
But then Jane pushed something to make the projection reappear. It wasn’t the image from last night, but a three-dimensional butterfly that spun into a map.
“Did you see that?” Barrett pointed. “Did you see what it was? A butterfly. A Monarch butterfly. That dead guy who took the cyanide pill? He said For the Monarch, right? Here’s a Monarch. Not like a king monarch, but a butterfly monarch.”
A tremble took hold of Eden’s limbs. She was no longer on the roof with sirens and screams and wind but outside an abandoned power plant in North Allegheny in the back of a quiet Land Rover, where a three-dimensional butterfly spun into a map just like this one, only that one had two blinking dots bouncing erratically. This one had five.
Eden stepped forward and swiped the map left, just like Mordecai had done in the back of his Land Rover.
Just as she expected, a database took its place.
“Those look like IP addresses,” Jack said.
Eden swiped again, knowing what would come next.
Code.
A list of commands, longer than before.
Were they commands given to her? Commands given against her will? If they were to translate them, would they go something like this:
Come.
Aim.
Shoot.
Kill.
With a shudder, she swiped one last time.
And the familiar image appeared. The one from last night, with a vast array of dots—too many to count—not blinking or erratic but steady and different colored.
Eden took a lurching step back.
She could smell smoke.
Was it still in her hair?
Jack stepped beside her with his head tilted, moving his pointer finger from one marker to the next like an invisible dot-to-dot. Suddenly, he stopped. Then he grabbed the projection and pain seared in Eden’s left temple. She clapped her hand over the spot.
“Stop,” Cass said, his voice filled with tension and authority.
He was staring at her, his golden eyes teeming with concern.
They were all staring at her. Even Jane.
She pulled her hand away from her head. The pain was gone. Had it been real, or did she imagine it? The tremble in her limbs grew. She felt disoriented. Out of sorts. Like Erik’s little sister whenever her blood sugar crashed. “He used that to control me,” she finally said.
“I would never do that,” Jack replied in earnest. “I just want to see something.”
With her heart thundering, she swallowed the acidic taste in her mouth and gave Jack a reluctant nod.
With utmost care, he captured the projection and zoomed out. Then zoomed out some more. And some more. Until the outline of a human body could be seen, like a diagram from anatomy class. And above it, a familiar number.
006.
Goosebumps marched across Eden’s skin.
Jack grabbed his laptop from the kitchen table and hurriedly pulled up images. A whole folder full of images, taken at various points. Some right here, in Dr. Norton’s home. Others, in Beverly Randall-Ransom’s. Most were recent, but some were taken years and years ago. When Eden was a baby. Again, when she was four.
“It’s a blueprint. A map of Eden’s entire system.” Jack turned back to the holographic diagram, his eyes wild. “There’s so much more detail. So much more information than we had before.”
The words planted a seed of hope deep in Eden’s soul. “Enough to stop it from happening again?”
Jack looked at her.
“If you studied all of this, if you figured out exactly how it works, do you think you could stop us from being controlled?”
“I think it’s a possibility,” he said.
The silence that followed his words hummed with energy. She hated this device. And now she loved this device. For it could be the key. The key to defusing the bomb that was Eden. The keys to preventing last night from ever happening again. The key to her freedom. A discovery so game-changing, she wanted to sandwich Jane’s face between her hands and kiss her on the forehead. But before she could even manage a proper breath, phones began to ring.
Jack’s.
Cleo’s.
Dr. Norton’s.
All of them at once.
Jack lunged at the coffee table to answer his. His eyes went wide with relief as soon as he heard his wife’s voice on the other end. He quickly let himself out onto the back deck.
Dr. Norton answered his, too.
Cleo’s wasn’t an active call, but several voice messages. All from her mom, who had somehow left them despite the sidelined cell service. She dialed her mother’s number. Dr. Beverly Randall-Ransom answered halfway through the first ring.
Cleo assured her she was fine. They were all fine. Then she listened as her mother relayed a string of information. She searched for a pen and jotted a phone number on the back of her hand. They expressed their I-love-you’s and Cleo hung up.
“She’s at the hospital, along with every other doctor in Chicago.” Cleo dialed the number she’d scrawled across her skin. “Mona was supposed to bring a kid who—”
Her voice came to an abrupt halt. So did her dialing.
“What?” Eden said.
“Mona.” Cleo blinked slowly, then her expression brightened—like a lightbulb turning on in slow motion. “Oh my gosh, Cass. The girl with the glass eye.”
His brow furrowed.
“That’s where I’ve heard it before. That’s why it’s familiar.”
“That’s why what’s familiar?” he said.
“The Monarch. I recognized the name because of the girl with the glass eye.” Cleo pointed the words at Cassian like they should mean something.
The furrow in his brow deepened. “Who’s the girl with the glass eye?”
“You don’t remember her?”
“Am I supposed to?”
“She was one of Mona’s girls.”
“Mona had a lot of girls.”
“Not with glass eyes!” Cleo looked at him in exasperation. “She was a few years older than us. Hardly ever talked. Dark hair. Pixie cut. Androgynous looking. At first, I thought she was a boy. But her name was something super feminine. Like Juliette or Florence.”
“How is she connected to The Monarch?” Eden cut in.
“I asked her how she got the glass eye.”
Eden snorted.
Cleo would ask such a question.
“She said The Monarch gave it to her.”
The goosebumps multiplied. All over Eden’s body. They raced up her neck and across her scalp. “Do you know where she is now?
“I have no idea,” Cleo said. “But I bet you anything Mona does.”
18
Dr. Norton ended his call as Jack opened the sliding glass door. He shuffled to the couch and sank onto the center cushion—staring but not seeing. “Annette and Ellery are being detained at the embassy in Rome. They’re on a waiting list to come home.”
Silence ensued, thick with uncertainty and the smell of burnt toast as the neglected bread popped from the toaster.
“They’ll have to go through customs,” he said in a deadened, faraway voice.
Dr. Norton squeezed Jack’s shoulder.
“What if the wrong people are monitoring flights? What if they have the same photograph he had?” He thrust his hand toward Cassian, who stood across from Eden with a tightly clenched jaw. He’d been hired to find not just Eden, but Ellery, too.
“Mordecai is dead,” Dr. Norton said, as if his death meant the death of all threats.
But it didn’t.
Jack ran his hand down the length of his face. “So was Volkova.”
“Ellery has the scrambling device.”
“What does that matter if Interitus sees her face on a security camera at O’Hare?”
“I don’t think they’re looking for us,” Eden interjected.
Jack and Dr. Norton looked at her.
Eden swallowed, glanced toward the hallway where her parents had disappeared, then forced herself to say the words she’d been keeping close to her chest. “We were supposed to be a gift.”
“What do you mean?” Dr. Norton asked.
“Last night. Before Mordecai died. Cass asked him what he wanted with us, and he said we were a gift. For the Monarch.”
Jack cut a sharp look at Cassian. They were together when the tattooed man took the cyanide pill. They were together when he spoke his strange, final words. “So you’re saying … Mordecai isn’t the Monarch?”
Eden shook her head.
Jack’s face went a shade paler.
Eden rushed onward. She meant to share this as good news. Hopeful news. She didn’t share it to add more worry to the equation. “By the time Dad uncovered us, Volkova had already been executed. Every Interitus member involved in the … experiment … was found and killed.
“Somehow, Mordecai discovered we weren’t destroyed. For whatever reason, he was monitoring this when our networks came online.” Eden picked up the device she both loved and hated and projected the first image. “I think it’s our networks.”
“If that’s true, why are there five?” Jack said.
Eden stared hard at the fifth dot, which was glitching. But not in the same way as the others. “You know for a fact my dad destroyed the other two?”
“Yes,” Dr. Norton said, so matter-of-factly, there was no room for questioning it. There were no more secrets. Everything was out on the table.
“Maybe that one is an error.” Jane had fixed the device partially, but not completely. The fifth dot could be the result of damage.
“It could be the Monarch,” Barrett said. “Some sort of control center.”
Eden nodded. Which left the other four. One for her. One for Ellery. One for Barrett and one for Jane. “When Mordecai projected this image in the back of his Land Rover, there were only two.”
“Yours and Ellery’s,” Jack said, catching on.
“Barrett’s and Jane’s weren’t on the map because they were disabled.” Eden looked at them expectantly, waiting for the dots to connect. Waiting for them to see that this situation was not so dire. But she could tell by their slightly confused expressions they weren’t getting there on their own. Eden would have to connect the dots for them. “When our networks came online, Mordecai realized we were alive. He decided to find us. Then, once his collection was complete, present us as a gift to The Monarch.”
“Gifts are surprises,” Barrett said.
“Exactly,” Eden replied. “So whoever the Monarch is, there’s a good chance he or she doesn’t know about us.” She looked from Jack to Dr. Norton, expecting her theory to comfort them.
They didn’t look comforted.
They looked deeply troubled.
“Why would he be monitoring this?” Jack asked, gesturing to the projection. “If everything was destroyed, where did he even get it from?”
Both valid questions. Eden didn’t have any good answers. As hopeful as she was trying to be, there was a high probability Mordecai wasn’t a lone wolf. Last night’s attack certainly wasn’t a one-man show. The Monarch might not know about them, but others probably did.
“IPs can be traced.” Jack’s face turned white as he grabbed the device and swiped to the second image—strings of numbers separated by periods. An entire database of them.
Eden’s stomach clenched.
All devices had IP addresses, and IP addresses could be traced. Maybe not to an exact location, but certainly to a general vicinity. This device was here with them, in Dr. Norton’s cabin.
“Can you hide it?” Cleo asked, understanding the concern.
Jack alternated between his laptop and the device in question, working like a fast and furious storm squall, while Eden’s clenched stomach went hard as a rock. Instead of seeing the dot-to-dot she had created, Jack and Dr. Norton had created a dot-to-dot of their own, forcing Eden to recalibrate hers.
