The Revelation of Eden Pruitt, page 2
No sound came.
Asher tried again.
This time, a small red light blinked above the keypad.
He swore.
Eden shifted.
The next drone was only twenty-one seconds away.
Asher tried again. Failed again.
Eighteen seconds.
“What are you doing, Ash?” Francesca’s unease carried through his walkie-talkie. “Get inside now.”
The keypad beeped.
The red light blinked.
“I need the override sequence.”
His radio squawked. “I don’t have the override sequence!”
Asher swore again, then plugged in a different number.
Beep.
Fail.
Twelve seconds.
He tried again.
Beep.
Fail.
Eden’s grip on the semi-automatic tightened. She imagined the drone coming around the corner. She imagined throwing Asher to the ground. Dodging the spray of bullets. Hurtling herself forward. Diving at the mechanical sparrow and catching it in her hand. She imagined Francesca watching it unfold with her mouth ajar. How long before she realized what Eden was? And what would she do to Cleo once she did?
Six seconds.
“Get out of there, Ash!” Francesca yelled.
But Asher didn’t listen. He hunched over the keypad, his bottom lip tucked beneath his front teeth, staring hard at the numbers in front of him.
Four seconds.
Eden braced for the infrared laser beam. The spray of bullets.
Three seconds.
Francesca shouted frantically as Asher punched in one last code.
There was a long beep.
A flash of green light.
The lock disengaged.
The seal hissed.
The door slid open.
They hurled themselves inside as the drone came flying around the corner. Asher slammed his palm against a button and the door closed behind them.
3
The room blinked with technology—computers and gadgets and another wall of monitors. Asher didn’t wait for his heart to settle before taking control. He sat in front of the mainframe, typing in passwords like Jack Forrester 2.0. He was faster, smoother. Almost choreographed in his movements.
He communicated with Francesca as he swapped the walkie-talkie for a Bluetooth earpiece. He projected holographic command logs. He scrolled through streams of code in that determined way a person does when they are looking for something specific. His long fingers flew across the keys. His hands transitioned from one device to the next with a faint smile tucked into one corner of his mouth, like his near-death experience had been nothing more than a game.
“Time to play,” he said, slipping on a VR set and picking up a remote that looked like it belonged to a gaming console.
Eden watched in begrudging admiration as the drone pattern changed. Shifted. Shrunk. Until all the mechanical sparrows were flying in a small circle under Judiciary Square.
“The pilot will notice,” she said.
“I spoofed the GPS and I looped in old surveillance.” Asher pulled up footage of the tunnels from the drones’ perspective. “So no, the pilot won’t notice. At least not until they catch sight of that.”
The footage changed angles as the drone flew around a corner, and there, in the bottom right of the projection, was a flash of something dark. The heel of a boot. Her boot, right before she and Asher dove inside this very room. It was a blip. A fraction of a second. But visible to the naked eye. How long until the pilot spotted it? How long until the pilot realized it occurred every time that particular drone turned that particular corner?
Asher opened the top drawer of a nearby desk and removed another Bluetooth earpiece. He tossed it to Eden. It sailed across the room. She caught it cleanly.
“I’ll be directing you to Metro Center where you will get the dose from Xavier. Then I’ll direct you to the asset, where you will do exactly as I say. Don’t ask questions. Don’t mess up.”
“Or you’ll put a bullet through my head?”
He stared at her unapologetically.
She stared back. “Do you really have such little regard for human life?”
“You hurled us into survival mode, sweetheart.”
The patronizing pet name set her teeth on edge.
“Survival 101. When you find yourself in situations like these, you can be one of two things—cutthroat or dead.” He picked up the semi-automatic she’d been all too quick to abandon on the floor and handed it over.
Eden bristled. “Why do I need that?”
“In case they send actual human beings down here to finish the job.”
She leaned away.
He rolled his eyes. “If you can’t be cutthroat, that’s your prerogative. But it would be really swell if you could do something helpful before you die.”
“I saved your life back there.”
“If we’re still alive tomorrow, remind me to thank you.” He pushed the gun into her hands so hard she took a step back. “Don’t go off script.”
“I heard you the first time,” she retorted, then stepped into the corridor.
The door slid shut behind her with a hiss of finality. She took a shaky breath, desperation stretching inside her like a yawn. She needed to get back to Cleo. She needed to find her way to Cassian. This was the best way to do it. Follow orders, even though she’d rather see the person giving them put in his place. She would prove to them she was on their side. She would prove to them she could be useful. But not so useful as to give herself away.
She suppressed her superior sense of direction. She ignored her photographic memory. She followed Asher’s commands like she didn’t know exactly how to get to where he was guiding her. She stepped around piles of debris, retracing the path she had traveled with Cleo when she wasn’t injured and Cassian when he was by her side. Until finally, she strode through a rusted subway car and came out the back end, straight into Metro Center where the scent of decay and human excrement assaulted her nostrils.
A wave of revulsion rolled up her throat.
She swallowed hard, cursing her extraordinary sense of smell. She forced her feet to keep going as Asher commanded her to hurry. Around an abandoned ATV, to the bodies lying in pools of blood. One face down. One face up, his eyes open and unseeing, just like Mordecai on the rooftop of The Sapphire. Death surrounded her. It was in these tunnels below and on the ground above and at her feet now. It was in her past, and right here in her present. How much more would she have to witness before the end?
“Xavier is on the right,” Asher said in her ear.
The one on the right was lying face down.
Her mouth flooded with saliva. She swallowed again—her revulsion thick and persistent as she reached out a trembling hand and pulled Xavier’s shoulder. He flopped onto his back. Sucking in a sharp breath, Eden snatched her hand away. His body was stiff with rigor mortis. His skin, a pallid gray. Nausea churned in her stomach as she lifted the flap of his coat and reached inside his pocket. Her fingers curled around a small container. She removed it quickly and backed away.
From the smell.
From the cold impression of his skin.
From his blank, unseeing eyes.
“Confirm the syringe is still inside,” Asher said.
The syringe.
Eden looked down at the small container and lifted the lid. A needle rested inside, the same shape and size as the one Jack Forrester had used on her in the Eagle Bend Police Department. Her body broke into a cold sweat. Asher was telling her where to go, how to get to the asset. But she couldn’t hear. She was back in the interrogation room, huddled in the corner with her hands pressed over her ears as a man pretending to be her father stalked closer with a syringe just like this one.
My name is Eden Pruitt. I live at 3235 West Buckle Lane. My parents are Ruth and Alexander Pruitt. My name is Eden Pruitt. I live at 3235 West Buckle Lane. My parents are Ruth and Alexander Pruitt …
“Drive the ATV and you’ll get there faster,” Asher said. “We have no time to waste.”
Eden shut the lid. She tucked the container inside the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt and was about to climb onto the ATV when something in Xavier’s hand caught her attention. A small, familiar magnet. The very one they had used to shut down the surveillance system. And by default, the emergency alert system, too.
The magnet was powerful. The magnet could very well come in handy. But Eden couldn’t pick it up. Not without shutting herself down. She strapped the semiautomatic around her shoulder, mounted the ATV, and started the engine.
It rumbled to life.
She peeled away, leaving the dead men and the magnet behind. She hit the gas, turning when Asher told her to turn, trying her hardest to erase the memory of Xavier from her mind and the syringe tucked into her pocket. She drove at full speed until she reached her destination. Then she slammed the brake and came to a skidding stop in front of the door.
She cut the engine.
“We’ve been injecting him every four hours. At the moment, we’re five doses behind schedule,” Asher said. “For all we know, he’s operating at full strength. If you can get to his neck, great, but anywhere will suffice.”
Her body shook.
This was the moment. She would have to stab him with a syringe—against his will—like she had been stabbed. She wasn’t worried about being overpowered. She was just as strong as the person trapped inside, with adrenaline coursing through her veins. But she did worry about giving herself away.
The back of her neck broke out into a cold sweat. Her fingers fumbled to press the code Asher recited.
The lock unlatched.
The door opened.
A young man sat inside the room. A boy her age with shaggy blonde hair and the same perfect symmetry as Eden and Barrett and Violet and Ellery. His face had no blemishes. No scars. No flaws. It was a face that would fit in perfectly at a college frat house. A classically handsome peer she might have crossed paths with next year on campus. But his wrists were shackled. His ankles, too. He was slumped in one corner with his head drooping like he didn’t have the strength to lift it.
Asher was commanding her to go. To hurry. To remove the syringe from the container.
The case rattled in her hands.
She moved closer, imagining herself in an alternate universe. One where she was not Eden Pruitt. She never lived at 3235 West Buckle Lane. Her parents were not Ruth and Alexander. Her father never worked for the CIA. The government never uncovered her existence. In that universe, she was part of the Electus. She was this boy. Inside this room. Locked up against her will.
The tremble in her hands grew.
She took another step when a splitting stab of pain pierced her temple. The same pain that made her fall on Lou’s treadmill. The same pain that would have made her fall from a moving train had Cassian not been there to catch her. On instinct, she clutched the spot. And the young man who appeared too weak to lift his head capitalized on her distraction.
The steel chains snapped.
His body barreled into hers, slamming her against the opposite wall. Asher shouted in her ear. And in a moment of self-preservation, Eden tightened her hand around the needle and shoved it into the young man’s neck.
She expected his eyes to roll. She expected him to go limp, to collapse in front of her.
Instead, his body seized. He screamed an ear-splitting scream as he rolled and writhed like every cell of his body was on fire.
Eden scrambled away. She clapped her hands over her ears. But she couldn’t block out the sound. The scream continued—on and on and on—echoing inside the small room. Echoing inside her skull. Even when it was over, when he was silent and still on the floor, it continued. A bloodcurdling wail that would haunt her dreams forever.
4
Asher’s deep voice shouted in her ear, but she couldn’t process his words. Not in light of the prone figure gasping on the ground in front of her. She stared in horror, her gaze fixed on the base of his throat, the notch between his collarbones drawing inward, skin pulling tight over bone as he sucked for air.
What had she just injected him with?
“Move,” Asher commanded. “You need to get him here before we lose our window of paralysis.”
Window of paralysis.
Did that include his lungs? Was he not able to breathe?
“Are you strong enough to get him on the back of the ATV? Is that something you can handle?”
His condescension made her want to snarl. Of course she could handle it. She could handle Asher if she wanted. She could lay him on his back in two seconds flat. But then she’d probably end up like this boy on the floor. This boy who couldn’t breathe. With a shudder, she hooked her hands beneath the asset’s arms and dragged him from the room. Aware that she was being watched via a surveillance camera, she pretended to struggle as she draped him over the seat of the ATV.
As soon as she arrived outside the control room, Asher came out to meet her, his expression renewed with wariness. Maybe even accusation. “I can’t believe you were able to inject him.”
She cut the engine and rubbed the back of her head, trying to sell it. It wasn’t hard to act rattled. She felt rattled.
“We only have plastic zip-ties,” someone called from inside.
Francesca.
Not in the White House Bunker, but here. Had she left Cleo behind? Eden’s heart leapt into her throat as she barged into the room. She didn’t exhale until her eyes landed on Cleo. She was here—semiconscious, sitting crooked in a chair, no longer connected to the portable IV. Eden rushed to her side and helped her into a more comfortable position on the floor.
Cleo smiled wanly. “Hey, Six.”
The incriminating nickname came like a jolt. Eden shot a look over her shoulder. Thankfully—concernedly—Cleo’s voice had been barely more than a whisper.
Asher clomped inside with the asset draped over his shoulders in a firefighter’s carry. He dumped the young man in the far corner of the room, where he retched on the floor.
“What was in that syringe?” Eden asked.
“Something that keeps him under control,” Francesca replied.
“Why aren’t you using tranquilizer?”
“Because that would require injecting him every ten minutes.” Francesca handed Asher a zip-tie.
He yanked the asset’s hands behind his back and secured his wrists. “This won’t hold.”
“We’ll have to increase the dosage,” Francesca said.
“And the frequency,” Asher added.
Eden’s stomach rolled. She imagined injecting him with more poison. At more frequent intervals. It was inhumane. Awful. Appalling. And yet, they talked about it as matter-of-factly as a pair of coaches preparing for a last-minute exhibition match. All the while, the asset’s scream was entombed in Eden’s memory.
“This is torture,” she said.
“If you have a better solution, we’re all ears.” He tightened another zip-tie around the asset’s ankles. “Right now, sweetheart, we’re working with what we’ve got.”
There it was again.
Sweetheart.
Her hands clenched into fists. She stood there—furious, gobsmacked—as Asher and Francesca conferred and Cleo struggled to retain consciousness.
“I do, actually,” Eden said.
Asher and Francesca paused from their conversation.
“You do, what?” Francesca asked.
“Have a better solution.”
Asher raised his eyebrows.
“It’s a small magnet made from a rare material.”
“A magnet?” Francesca’s acrimonious tone dripped with contempt.
“It shut down your entire surveillance system. It can shut down any system. Including his.” Eden nodded at the asset without looking at him. She couldn’t bear to look at him. He was so uncomfortably bound. Lying in a pool of his own vomit. And she had done it. She had injected that poison.
Asher folded his arms. “How do you know he has a system?”
“From my dad.”
“Right,” Francesca practically spat. “The CIA agent.”
Asher shifted his weight, cocked his head. “Where is this magical magnet?”
“With Xavier.”
“With Xavier?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“If it’s really so powerful, why didn’t you bring it with you?”
“I didn’t know we would need it.” She lifted her chin when she said it, refusing to squirm no matter how long Asher stared.
Finally, he pressed his finger against the Bluetooth in his ear and radioed Bunker Three. He told the survivors to make their way to the Control Room. But first, they needed to get a UTV from Union Station. One of them would drive to Metro Center and retrieve a special magnet.
After checking on the drones to ensure they were still circling beneath Judiciary Square, Asher turned his attention to the smoking sky above, where several more drones circled. Francesca joined him.
Eden knelt beside Cleo, who was unconscious once again. Her complexion, worse. Her breathing, painfully labored. Eden checked the bandage around Cleo’s thigh. Infection seemed inevitable, especially without the IV. Eden pictured Cleo the first time they met. Garage band music on full blast. Bantu knots in her hair. Snake bite piercings in her lip. Brimming with life as she threw her arms around Cassian Gray’s neck like he wasn’t the most intimidating specimen Eden had laid eyes upon. Shoot-straight, irreverent, punk rocker Cleo. Eden refused to let her die. There had to be something she could do.
Closing her eyes, she focused on the whispered conversation unfolding behind her. Asher and Francesca were huddled together on the far side of the room, discussing what came next. Apparently, they needed more poison, which was stored in frozen vials somewhere above ground.
Asher broke from their huddle with a clap. Eden resisted the urge to shake her head. She knew what he was going to say, but she would not be their gopher. Not for this.
“Girl with the nine lives,” he called.
