The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 9
All of it unfolded like she was at the bottom of a deep dark well, watching live coverage on a television screen high above her.
Come.
There.
Again.
The only clear thing as she was shoved from behind and Cass wrapped his arm around her waist and nearly carried her through the stampeding mob, in the opposite direction like two salmon swimming upstream. They ran through the ballroom—an inferno of fire and smoke—through another exit. Into an evacuated kitchen.
He rounded a corner, the gun poised and ready. But there was no one. The kitchen was empty. He kicked open a door that read Employees Only and stepped into a lobby with lights that flickered and hummed.
Electricity.
Cass strode to the windows, his hand pressed against the side of his head as he tried to decipher the squawks emitting from their earpieces—familiar voices chopped into indecipherable sound bites. Eden didn’t try to decipher it. She was too transfixed by the elevator doors and the errant thought taking shape in her mind. A silly inclination. A tempting inclination. A strong inclination.
Come.
Cassian spoke back to the choppy voices as Eden stepped closer to the elevator. She was a fly and the button a web and she was caught.
She pressed it.
The doors slid open, as if waiting there just for her.
She stepped inside.
“We need to move,” Cass said, pushing into the stairwell.
Then, as though realizing Eden was no longer behind him, he turned—his eyes widening, his pupils dilating—as the elevator doors slid shut and up Eden went.
All the way to the top.
She walked through the deserted rooftop bar, out into the crisp, windy night—her dress flapping around her ankles. Far below, people screamed, and sirens wailed while she stood on the rooftop of The Sapphire Hotel.
“You came.”
She turned.
Mordecai stood in front of a helicopter, dressed in a tuxedo, his smile twisted as a holographic image projected from the device in his hand. And while a part of Eden’s brain knew that this was it, the chance she’d been waiting for—she only needed to get her hands on him—she didn’t move. The heavy fog in her head had become a barrier, separating her mind from her body. The two were no longer communicating. As much as she wanted to wrap her hands around his neck and end him right here, right now, she couldn’t.
He walked closer, pebbles crunching underfoot. “Where are they?”
Eden stood—unmoving, unspeaking.
“Where are the other two?”
She ground her teeth, but Mordecai pressed something on the device. A portion of the holographic image lit with bright red and the word escaped without censor. “Milwaukee.”
“Where in Milwaukee?”
Eden gave him the address, unsure why she was giving him the address.
“Good girl.” Mordecai stroked a cold knuckle along her cheek, his eyes filled with the same unsettling awe as before, when she came to the abandoned power plant. “You, my dear, have proven to be very difficult. Which means you’re strong. I admire strength. When properly controlled.”
The door behind them burst open.
Mordecai grabbed her, spun her around, and used her like a shield.
“She’s on the roof!” Cass yelled into his Bluetooth as he came to a stop with his gun drawn, his eyes blazing. First with fury. Then confusion. Eden could beat Cassian in hand-to-hand combat and he was a highly trained and dangerous fighter. Which meant she could crush Mordecai like a bug. All she had to do was carry out the move Cassian had helped her perfect. But Eden didn’t spin around. She just stood there like a fool as Cassian breathed heavily, his attention moving from the helicopter to the holographic image to the remote in Mordecai’s hand. And then his confusion swirled into an acute point of painful clarity. “He’s controlling you.”
It was true.
Somehow.
Not like the first time when she attacked her parents. But it was true just the same. Eden was fully conscious. Completely aware of all that was happening, and yet powerless to make her own decisions as Mordecai hid behind her like a coward, his arm clamped tight around her waist.
“Surely you came armed.” He started at her left ankle. He groped to her thigh. Cassian’s chest heaved. His nostrils flared. Her skin crawled as Mordecai moved to her right leg. His hand stopped on her calf, finding the gun strap. “Empty,” he said, like one might comment on a curious weather pattern. “No matter. I have what we need beneath my suit coat. Just to your left. Why don’t you get it out, my dear?”
Why don’t you go to hell? Her thoughts spat in reply.
And yet, she obeyed.
With her lungs caving in, she removed the gun from its holster and pointed it straight at Cassian.
He stared back at her; his expression tortured.
And in that moment, Eden knew—it was not his life he cared about.
But hers.
“What do you want with them?” Cass yelled above the wind. Above the sirens. Above the panicked sounds of a night gone horribly wrong.
“It’s not what I want with them. It’s what I want for them.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
Eden squeezed her shaking hands tight around the metal.
Somebody help.
She didn’t want this gun in her hands.
She didn’t want to point it at Cassian.
But she couldn’t put it down.
The plea squeezed up her throat and spluttered past her lips. “Help.”
Mordecai didn’t hear. He was too preoccupied with Cassian. “They have a destiny to fulfill.”
Cass fired his gun.
A bullet whizzed past Eden’s ear.
Mordecai ducked behind her and screamed, “You dare!”
Then he pushed something on the device. The holographic image radiated with waves of bright orange, and with a surge of intense pain, Eden pulled the trigger.
She shot the gun.
Cassian dove behind a half-wall, bullets colliding with brick, spraying crumbles of hardened clay into the air.
No!
She didn’t want to do this.
“Did you really think you could outsmart me?” Mordecai yelled.
Inside, her mind yelled louder. Drop it! Drop the gun. But her hands kept the weapon trained on the half-wall behind which Cassian hid as the door burst open again.
Two people ran out onto the roof.
To Eden’s horror, she turned the gun on them.
Jack Forrester.
And her mother.
I love you. Do you understand? To the moon and back.
Jack held up his hands, a gun clutched in his right.
Mordecai pulled Eden closer to the helicopter. “Drop it!”
Jack did as Mordecai said.
“Slide it this way.”
Jack gave the gun a kick.
It slid over pebble and concrete and stopped two feet in front of Eden’s strappy shoes.
Mordecai swept a lock of fallen hair from the side of her face, wet from the sprinklers, and poured cold words into her ear. “I would like you to shoot them.”
No.
Please, no.
She squeezed her eyes—demanding herself to wake up. Right now. This wasn’t real. This was a nightmare. But Eden didn’t wake up. And a horrible, splitting pain burst inside her head.
“What are you doing to her?” Mom shouted.
“Nothing she can’t stop,” Mordecai said. “All she has to do is obey.”
Cold, searing pain made her finger curl around the trigger.
“Please.” Mom’s pupils shrank into pinpricks as she faced the barrel. “Eden.”
“Stop calling her that!” Mordecai screamed, pulling Eden further back. “She is Subject 006. She has no name until she is given a name. Now I said shoot them.”
The radiating orange overtook the projected image.
Pain surged again—unbearable, blinding pain.
She was going to do it.
She was going to shoot her mother.
She could feel it in her finger, twitching over the trigger.
“Help,” she cried, choking over the word.
Somebody help.
Black spots danced in the periphery of her vision.
And sound crackled in her ear.
A voice.
Not the one who told her to come.
Not the one who told her to shoot.
This voice was small and still and familiar.
Eden, can you hear me?
Her exhale was loud—half-cry, half-breath as a tear tumbled down her cheek.
“Do you see their foreheads?” Mordecai said. “I’d like you to put a bullet in the center of each.”
The pain swelled—so excruciating, she would have dropped to her knees had his grip not remained tight around her waist.
“In five … ”
Agony accumulated as her heart thundered and her finger trembled. But somehow, rising from the midst of it—her father’s voice. Fierce and insistent. “Eden, can you hear me?”
“Four …”
“You are not Subject 006.”
“Three …”
“Your name is Eden Pruitt. I gave you that name. Because I am your father. Do you hear me, Eden? Listen to my voice.”
She did.
But the pain. The pain was relentless, agonizing, impossible. She could resist now, but she couldn’t resist forever. She was going to pull it. And then she was going to die.
“Your name is Eden Pruitt. You are my daughter. Listen to my voice.”
“Two …”
“I love you, Eden. You are my daughter. Listen to me. Listen to my voice!”
She grabbed onto his words, her body shaking. She repeated them in her mind like she’d repeated them at the Eagle Bend police department. Her name and her identity, over and over again. Her name was Eden Pruitt. She was his and she was loved. Her name was Eden Pruitt. She was his and she was loved. Her name was Eden Pruitt. She was his and she was loved. It was a truth Mordecai hadn’t counted on. A truth that overpowered the pain. A truth that gave her a voice and that voice said no.
“One.”
Her head split in two. The pain tore through her as it reached its pinnacle. She resisted for as long as she could, and then she let loose a guttural scream. Cassian sprang from the shadows. She pulled the trigger as he pulled his, tackling her mother to the ground.
His bullet met its mark as the device in Mordecai’s hand fell.
The holographic image disappeared.
The pain cracking through Eden’s skull disappeared with it as the man behind her howled and writhed, clutching his hand. His bloodied, blown apart stump of a hand.
Cassian rolled up onto his knees and pointed his gun.
Eden dropped hers.
Mom was on the ground behind him.
Stunned.
Pale.
Alive.
They had Mordecai cornered.
But the cornered man was not giving up without a fight.
With another howl, he pitched forward.
“Freeze!” Cassian yelled.
Mordecai did not freeze.
He grabbed the gun Eden had dropped.
And Cassian fired.
The shot spun Mordecai halfway around. His eyes went wide as he clutched his good hand to his chest, where red blossomed through the white of his pressed shirt like a rose in bloom. He looked down at it peculiarly—oddly—like he didn’t understand why the rose was blooming. Then he fell to his knees and toppled.
Cass raced forward and dropped beside him.
“Who are you working with?” he demanded. “What do you want with them?
Mordecai coughed, blood gurgling in his throat. Trickling from his mouth. “They were … a gift …”
Cassian grabbed him by his suit coat, lifting his upper half off the ground. “A gift for who?”
“The Monarch.” With a wheeze, Mordecai raised his stump of a hand in salute. Then it dropped to his side as his eyes went glossy and blank.
14
Eden ran to her mother as Cass stared into the unseeing eyes of the man he’d been hunting.
Mordecai was dead.
Gone.
Cass had done what Eden’s father told him to do. He’d taken Mordecai out. But he’d done it before getting answers. He picked up the fallen device. The one Mordecai had used to control her.
A gift.
For the Monarch.
It was the same moniker the man with the tattoos had used after taking the cyanide pill. Cass had thought—or maybe just hoped—that Mordecai was The Monarch. That the threat to Eden would end once Mordecai ended.
But he was wrong.
Mordecai wasn’t the Monarch.
The threat to Eden continued.
Cass muttered a curse.
The rooftop door burst open.
Eden’s father appeared.
“Dad!”
Eden pulled her mother to her feet, bearing her weight as they joined Alexander Pruitt in a family hug. He looked over his daughter’s shoulder, from Cassian to the dead man on the ground to the helicopter behind them—his hair a mess, his face a bloodless white.
He was without his walker, which meant he’d gotten up here without it. An impossible feat, if not for the adrenaline. Cass knew all too well how far that particular hormone could stretch the bounds of possibility. He also knew the exhausting crash that followed. With his wife and daughter alive in his arms, Pruitt looked on the verge of collapse.
Before he could, another explosion rent the night—a colossal blast as the rooftop shuddered—so violently Cass was pitched forward. Then another as the whole of downtown Chicago went black. The screaming below intensified.
Cass ran to the rooftop banister and peered down, trying to make sense of the pandemonium. A raging inferno burned across the street from The Sapphire, where paramedics and firefighters and reporters had gathered. Another bomb had exploded.
“What’s happening?” Eden asked as sharp popping joined the cacophony.
With a shriek, Eden’s mom ducked like the spray of bullets might reach them on the roof.
“We need to get out of here before the building collapses,” Forrester shouted.
Cass agreed. But how?
Eden’s mother stood with her left foot hovering above the ground like a dog on point. Her father leaned heavily against the rooftop door, his face white as bone. They were sixty-eight stories above the ground, and the entire power grid of downtown Chicago was out. Mr. Pruitt looked longingly at the helicopter, as though wishing he knew how to fly it. Apparently, his days in the CIA had not equipped him with that skill.
He heaved open the door with the weight of his body and said with a grimace, “He’s right.”
“Dad—” Eden objected.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, cutting through her protest. “Help your mother. I’ll be right behind you.”
She hesitated.
“Move,” her father commanded.
Cass pocketed the fallen device as Eden helped her mother inside. They cut through the rooftop bar and into a smoky stairwell. Five flights down, Eden lifted her mother into her arms while her father fell further behind. Cass lagged, ready to help as soon as the man allowed it. So far, he hadn’t allowed it.
Then another explosion rattled the walls.
Pruitt sank onto the step.
“Dad!” Eden yelled, turning around like she would carry them both.
“I’ve got him,” Cass called, doubling back.
With a pain-soaked groan from Pruitt, Cass heaved the man over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. The weight of him multiplied with every flight they descended. Cass grit his teeth against the discomfort and kept going.
Forty stories.
Thirty stories.
Twenty.
Fifteen.
His shoulder ached.
The smoke thickened.
His lungs screamed for oxygen.
Halfway between the eleventh and the tenth, Eden ground to a halt. Cass coughed into his left bicep.
“Someone’s screaming,” she said.
He strained to hear, but there was nothing but the sharp hacking from Eden’s mom and the roaring of fire.
Eden carried her mother to the tenth floor and pulled open the door to a hallway filled with flames.
“What are you doing?” Forrester shouted, his sweatshirt over his mouth as he slammed the door shut.
“There are people stuck in the elevator!”
“We have to get out of here,” Forrester said.
“We can’t leave them.”
“Look at your father, Eden.”
Forrester’s words did the trick.
Alexander Pruitt had passed out long ago. Whether from the pain or from some other more dire reason, Cass didn’t know. He coughed as Eden schooled her horrified expression and they resumed their descent.
Two floors later, they passed three firefighters going up as they made their way down. Eden told them about the people stuck in the elevator.
“Between the tenth and eleventh floors,” she said.
The firefighters hurried along.
So did they.
Until they reached the third floor.
Forrester shoved the door open. They raced across the decimated ballroom lobby, smoke and fire all around, to a different set of stairs. Cass followed without question. Forrester knew where he was going. He’d spent the past few days studying the hotel’s layout.
They descended five more stories and burst into a parking garage.
No smoke.
No sound.
Just rows of quiet, abandoned cars.
Forrester fell into a violent coughing fit as Cass kicked in a car window, his lungs sucking in the clean air.
The alarm blared.
Eden’s dad didn’t even stir as Cass unlocked the door and placed him in the back seat. Eden helped her mom inside as the ceiling above them quaked, bits of cement raining to the ground.
Cass used his bare hands to pry apart the panels on the top and bottom of the steering column, exposing the ignition cylinder. He grabbed a shard of glass by his boot and cut the power wires. He stripped, twisted, then cut the starter wires too.
A few seconds later, the car roared to life.
