The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 26
“It’s a raid!” Xavier shouted. “It’s a—”
Gunfire silenced his cry as all three walkie-talkies squawked to life. The guy’s. Francesca’s. Dvorak’s. A commotion of beeps. A flurry of voices as the siren continued to blare and footsteps and gunfire sounded outside.
Cleo ducked, like the bullets were whizzing into the room.
“Secure the asset!” Dvorak shouted at the guy. “Get them to the tunnel,” she commanded Francesca. Then she flung open the door and raced out into the fray.
“Follow me,” Francesca shouted.
Eden broke the zip tie as they ran through the cacophony, toward an escalator as soldiers poured into Union Station from the same tunnel Eden, Cassian, and Cleo had come, guns ablaze.
Francesca ran for the marble stairs. They followed her up to the ground floor, where Union Station stood like a monstrosity of toppled marble and granite. Sunlight poured through rips and holes and broken skylights in what remained of the arched ceiling high above, landing on piles of debris—dust and rubble, chunks of concrete, shards of glass, crumbling centurion statues, and collapsed support beams. They raced out into the open as helicopters circled in the sky and the staccato sound of gunfire rent the air.
People screamed and scattered as an explosion blasted the remains of a fountain, throwing Eden off her feet.
She landed hard on her back, her head cracking against the pavement. For a second, her ears rang. The world spun and darkened at the edges. But then it stopped, and the pain quickly receded. Francesca pulled her to her feet. Cleo was down in the rubble and smoke—unconscious, her hands still bound behind her back, a shard of marble lodged in her thigh. Eden pulled it out and the wound gushed crimson. She yelled Cassian’s name, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t come.
Smoke and chaos and flames grew all around. Francesca tugged Eden’s hand, demanding her to follow. Cleo was bleeding. Heavily. Screaming Cassian’s name again, Eden gathered Cleo in her arms, then draped her over her shoulder like she weighed nothing at all. If Francesca wondered about Eden’s strength, there was no time to question it.
Another blast rocked the ground.
Francesca ran.
Eden followed, desperately searching for the boy she couldn’t leave behind. The boy who hadn’t wanted to come. They were here because of her blasted curiosity.
But helicopters circled.
Guns fired.
And Eden couldn’t stay.
With her heart cleaving in two, she raced after Francesca. Away from the fray—hoping and praying with every fiber of her being that Cassian was okay.
40
Eden felt exposed—too out in the open as she followed Francesca away from Cassian. Away from the sounds of helicopters and gunfire concentrated at Union Station. They reached Constitution Avenue, an annihilated remnant of a bygone era. When the country was led by a president and students took field trips to the White House—now charred black and partially standing as though somebody had doused it with gasoline, lit it on fire, and didn’t hurry to extinguish the flames.
They crept past the Washington Monument, a gargantuan shaft toppled on its side. They ducked beneath partially collapsed support beams as Eden bore the weight of an unconscious Cleo with one thought forefront in her mind...safety. Before she could go back for Cassian—and she would go back—she needed to get Cleo to safety.
She tailed Francesca until they’d wound their way deep into the bowels of the White House. The young woman walked with confidence, like a person who knew where she was going, then stopped in front of a stainless-steel keypad. She entered a password and a pair of giant steel doors slid open in front of them. Once they entered, the doors closed with a loud and definitive hiss.
They hurried along a tiled corridor, where pipes hung from the ceiling and into a room with wood paneling and a large conference table. There were television monitors and old-fashioned telephones and digital clocks and maps, and America’s presidential seal mounted on the wall.
Eden broke the zip tie that held Cleo’s hands behind her back and lay her gently on the floor.
She mumbled something incoherent, a line of sweat beading above her lip. The left side of her face was scratched and scraped. A deep gash cut through her right eyebrow. Eden tore Cleo’s pant leg, where she’d been stabbed with a knife-like chunk of marble shrapnel. Blood gushed from the wound.
“We need bandages,” Eden said.
“You’re going to have to get creative,” Francesca replied, turning on the televisions and unclipping her walkie-talkie. “Pru, are you there? Over.”
Eden yanked off her sweatshirt and tore it into strips. She tied a tourniquet around Cleo’s upper thigh, then stuffed the wound like Dr. Beverly Randall-Ransom had stuffed her father’s.
The television monitors played footage of other rooms with people hiding inside. Along with ground surveillance where the battle unfolded. All the while, Francesca spoke into the choppy static of her walkie-talkie, trying to reach Prudence.
A line of military trucks rolled to a stop outside Union Station, where fires blazed, and smoke poured into the sky.
“I need to go,” Eden said, applying pressure to Cleo’s wound.
“If you leave, your friend will die. And I won’t even have to lift a finger to do it.”
Francesca was right.
If Eden left, Cleo would bleed out.
Her femoral artery had been punctured.
“Please, help. Until I come back. I swear I’ll come back as soon as I find Cassian.”
“Over her dead body.” Francesca turned away from the screens—one eye glassy, one eye mutinous. “You have done enough damage. I will not let you cause any more. We are following emergency protocol.”
Eden’s heart raged.
She could easily overpower Francesca Burnoli. But then what would happen to Cleo? She looked at the screens in a desperate search for Cassian, but she couldn’t find him anywhere.
Cass’s ears rang and beyond the ringing came the muffled sounds of warfare. His shoulder throbbed. He squeezed his eyes tight, then opened them wide—smoke and fire and soldiers in fatigues all around. He coughed, the pain in his shoulder searing, the pain in his head splitting, as he lay awkwardly on his side with his hands bound behind his back.
“Eden,” he groaned.
He had to find her.
She wasn’t safe.
They’d been ambushed by the government of the United States. The same government that had ordered Eden’s destruction seventeen years ago. If they captured her, he knew they would order her destruction again.
Gritting his teeth, Cass scooted toward what remained of a retaining wall. He used the jagged stone to cut his ties. He pushed himself up, his left arm dangling like a limp fish by his side. He clutched his injured shoulder, grappling for the strength to force it back into place. With his molars clamped tight, he braced himself against the wall and used his good arm to pull his elbow up until the joint popped and the blinding pain abated.
His chest heaved.
Sweat beaded along his brow.
He wiped a smear of blood and grime along his forehead, then got to his feet when a rifle pressed against his temple. “On your knees.”
Cass glared at his captor—not much older than himself. Then—lightning quick—he brought up his good arm, shoving the rifle up and away. Bullets sprayed the air as Cass swept the soldier’s legs, bringing him down hard on his back as he seized the rifle for himself. He turned it on his captor, eliciting loud shouts all around as three soldiers aimed their semi-automatics at his head—fingers curled around their triggers.
He couldn’t fight them all.
There were too many of them.
And Cass was no help to Eden dead.
He dropped the rifle and held up his uninjured arm.
The fallen soldier shoved him to the ground and jammed his knee into Cass’s neck. He yanked Cass’s hands behind his back. His shoulder screamed. Fuming, he ground his teeth against the pain as the soldier bound his wrists and pulled him to his knees.
When the smoke cleared, he saw Prudence Dvorak kneeling, too, on the other side of the decimated fountain. Along with several others.
But no Eden. Which meant she hadn’t been caught.
The soldier forced Cass to his feet and shoved him forward, toward a line of military trucks, past bodies on the ground laying in pools of blood. Eden couldn’t be among them. Eden couldn’t die. He had to remind himself of this every time he looked at a new face. But Cleo? She wasn’t immune to death.
A trickle of blood ran into Cass’s eye. He blinked, trying to focus. But his head throbbed. His stomach roiled. The blast that knocked him out and separated his shoulder had no doubt concussed him, too. He swallowed his nausea as his captor forced him into the back of a truck.
By the time it was loaded, there were eight in all.
Eden wasn’t among them.
Neither was Cleo.
Prudence Dvorak, however, sat across from him, glaring murderously as the truck rumbled to life and drove them away like prisoners of war.
41
Eden watched with horrifying dread as Cassian was loaded into the back of a truck, her short-lived relief at the sight of him alive quickly replaced by a cold and sickening panic. He had been captured. By soldiers who thought he was a member of Interitus. Prudence Dvorak might not believe in its existence, but the government sure did.
Francesca kicked the chair in front of her and cursed loudly.
Eden pressed harder against Cleo’s wound, all of it too familiar—the blood on her hands, the horror stretching wide in her chest. Only this time, she wasn’t in the back of Dr. Norton’s truck and Cassian Gray wasn’t behind the wheel. She looked at the truck where he’d been loaded, willing Cleo’s bleeding to stop. Willing herself to wake up.
Wake up, Eden. Wake up.
She just needed to open her eyes and Cassian would be there—solid and steady and warm—like he always was. Her buoy in this storm-tossed sea. But Eden didn’t wake up. And the buoy had been taken.
He’d been taken because of her recklessness. Once again, she’d been unable to resist. She made an idiotic decision. Only these repercussions were so much worse than a mug shot.
Francesca slammed her hands onto the table. “Seventeen years! We have been here—building our numbers, carefully organizing—for seventeen years and you show up and ruin it in a single day!”
“Organizing what?” Eden asked.
“The Resistance,” Francesca spat.
The answer settled between them—as jarring as Francesca’s appearance at Union Station.
“The Resistance,” Eden repeated, her voice an unsteady whisper. She gave her head a small shake. “What are you resisting?”
“The man you came here to kill.”
“The Monarch.”
“And his followers. They call themselves Invictus. We call them Swarm.” Francesca dug her fingers into her short hair, then slid them down her cheeks, pulling her face long as she stared at the monitors. “Seventeen years. He’s been hunting her for seventeen years. Always searching for the one who got away. And now, thanks to you, he has her!”
“The government has her.”
Francesca shot Eden a scathing eye roll.
Eden blinked, then looked down at her unconscious friend. Cleo the Conspiracy Theorist. If Interitus never existed, then Interitus wasn’t responsible for The Attack. Had Cleo been right all along? “Is The Monarch someone in our government?”
“He’s bigger than the government.” Francesca studied the screens. Some soldiers were climbing into the trucks. Others were searching the bodies on the ground. With a despairing exhale, Francesca picked up her walkie-talkie and pressed the button. “Pru has been taken. Over.”
There was no reply but the lonely sound of static.
“Asher, come in.” Francesca twisted the knob on the two-way radio. “Asher, do you copy?”
Several squawks broke through the white noise.
Then the walkie-talkie beeped. “I didn’t make it to the asset.”
The deep voice belonged to the guy in the hoodie.
Asher.
“What’s your 20?” Francesca asked.
“Bunker Four,” Asher said.
Francesca pointed a remote at the television monitors. The surveillance switched from above ground to below. Asher was crouched inside one screen, bent over a man who looked worse off than Cleo. The second screen was empty. In the third, a solitary young man sat slumped in one corner. And in the fourth, a group of survivors huddled together, all of them intact.
“Is the asset secure?” Asher asked.
“For now,” Francesca replied.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Stay where you are. Follow emergency protocol. And stand by.”
“Copy that.”
Francesca set the two-way radio on the table and sank into the seat she had kicked—a gesture of defeat as she gazed forlornly at the monitors. “We were fifty strong. And now we’re only ten.” She pushed a button on the remote. The monitors returned to the scene unfolding above. A war zone. A graveyard as the soldiers combed through the dead.
Eden looked away. But she could never unsee it.
Cleo moaned.
Eden wanted to scream. She wanted to rant and rail. Tear the nanobots from her veins and inject them into Cleo’s. The human body was so frustratingly fragile. So utterly at risk of incurring damage. First her father. Now Cleo. The bleeding had stopped, but what about infection? Eden had stuffed dirty bits of sweatshirt into her wound. How long until sepsis set in?
She grit her teeth. All of this because of The Monarch. Someone bigger than the government. But how was that even possible? “Who is he?” she asked.
Francesca looked at her.
“The Monarch. He’s a man. Who?”
With her good eye, Francesca pinned Eden beneath a contemptuous stare. “America’s favorite hero.”
America’s Favorite Hero?
There was only one person Eden could think of that fit such a description. But it couldn’t be. He helped rebuild their country after it hit rock bottom. He started a foundation that served those who suffered from chronic health issues after The Attack. He loved America. He called himself a true patriot. And even if all of that was an act, why would he bomb his own hotel? Eden shook her head trying to collect her thoughts. “You’re not talking about—The Monarch can’t be … Oswin Brahm?”
Francesca gave her eyebrows a lift.
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would he work so hard to rebuild what he destroyed?”
“It’s all part of his master plan. Tear down to build up.”
Eden remembered the pamphlet. Ad Astra per Aspera. Through hardship to the stars. Salvo Impetum. Saving blow. Sanctus Diem. A holy day. The fourth of October. The day of The Attack—a catastrophic event that stripped the nation down to its barest, most vulnerable foundation. Then he swooped in like all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, determined to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. “What’s he trying to build?”
“A utopian empire. One that will never fall. One that is completely loyal to him.”
Caelum In Terra.
Another phrase from the pamphlet.
Heaven on Earth.
“Don’t his followers care that he’s building it on the graveyard of millions?”
“As long as they’re not one of them.”
Eden’s stomach dropped. She pictured the charismatic billionaire. Hobnobbing with celebrities and politicians. Mingling with America’s most influential at the Prosperity Ball, sitting like a king on his throne—knowing exactly what was coming. Because he’d planned it. A murderer. A villain. A demon disguised as a savior.
Francesca swiveled her chair to face Eden. “Did you really kill the Bryson’s?”
“No.” They’d been set-up. Just like Prudence Dvorak had been set up. She was no more a terrorist than Eden and Cassian. “Several years ago, you told Cleo the Monarch gave you that eye. Mona told us the Brysons gave you the eye. So we thought one of the Brysons might be The Monarch.”
Francesca grimaced.
Cleo moaned.
“We broke into the Bryson’s safe, and we found a photograph of Prudence with Lillian Kashif. Clay has a picture of him and Amir on his Perk account. We thought you were all on the same side.”
“You thought wrong,” Francesca said.
Amir and Prudence weren’t with The Monarch; they were against him. They were part of The Resistance, which—thanks to Eden—was currently on the brink of extinction. They’d brought in that magnet which suppressed an alarm that might have saved dozens of lives. She peered at the monitors. At the war zone overhead. At the dead bodies on the ground. The ones she could never unsee.
They’d gone horribly off course. But then, wouldn’t most people have reached the same conclusion in their shoes? Thanks to the dead security guards at SafePad, they knew The Monarch had infiltrated the police force. It wasn’t a jump to assume The Monarch had infiltrated other areas of the government, too. Like the NSA. Not to mention, Amir attended a Thursday night meeting at the Aigner’s, parents of the late Melody Aigner. One of ninety-three Magnes Matres. The whole thing had been eerily similar to the Thursday night meetings the Bryson’s hosted in Glencoe. Which meant …
“Amir’s a spy,” Eden said.
Francesca’s hands balled into fists on top of the table. She stared hard at the monitors, where small pockets of soldiers had gathered into groups, as though conferring. Were they going to comb through the city? Flush them out of their hiding holes? When this was all over, would Eden and Francesca and Cleo be captured like Cassian? Would the entire Resistance be dead or imprisoned?
“How does he get away with it?” Eden asked.
“What do you mean?” Francesca replied.
“If this group—Invictus or Swarm or whatever they’re called is meticulous enough to hide Oswin Brahm’s true identity and carry out those attacks, then how is Amir able to spy?”
“Because of his mother.”
