Watch Me, page 21
“You said— You promised me that if I completed my mission you would set me and my sister free—”
“Death is freedom. Should you choose to accept your final sacrifice, we will reward you by killing Clara swiftly. If you reject the final sacrifice, we will keep her alive for ten years, each day enduring greater tortures than the day before.”
The room is spinning around me. Suddenly I can’t breathe, can’t see straight—
“You will dig your own grave, Rosabelle. You will drink the vial and bury yourself alive. Your body will decompose within twenty-four hours, the results of which will ignite an undetectable explosion that will radiate the land at unprecedented levels, effectively cauterizing all within a hundred-mile radius. The rebels’ preternatural powers will disappear. Within six months, their bodies will succumb to the gene edit, allowing us control over them without further bloodshed or strife. This is the magnitude of our mercy.”
“Why do I need to bury myself alive?”
“Your decomposing body will require fusion with a classical element; of the four, earth with earth is the most powerful.”
I’m out of my mind, a collapsed star, a black hole, then nothing, nothing—
You’re not the only one, Leon had said to me. You’re not the only one here.
“You’re doing this everywhere, aren’t you?” I gasp. “All over The New Republic. I’m not the only one—”
“You have eight weeks to accomplish this task. Should you choose to reject this mission, you will be replaced, promptly assassinated, and your sister will suffer the consequences.”
“What are the last three phases of the mission?” I manage to ask.
“Death, destruction, and rebirth.”
“What does that mean?”
In response Leon unhinges without warning, his head hanging forward from his neck hanging forward from his body, his limbs locked in positions so unnatural I back away from him with a strangled sound. Leon is hyperventilating uncontrollably. He finally falls to his knees and claws at his head in a frenzied panic, and by the time he starts screaming I already know how it’s going to end.
I throw my arms up over my face, the vial still clenched in my fist, bracing myself as he screams and screams until the lights come on in the hall, the sounds of footsteps thundering toward us. The handles on the dresser drawers begin rattling, the ground shuddering beneath me, fists pounding relentlessly against my door. I hear muted voices and cries, the clatter and snick of a lock tumbling. By the time Agatha slams open my bedroom door in a crazed panic, Leon has self-immolated.
I draw my hands away from my face and it seems to take years. Blood has spattered across the scene, smearing everything. I am numb as I survey the aftermath: gone are his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Leon has been eviscerated from the inside, flesh and blood pushed out of open orifices. My stomach heaves.
I double over.
I hear Agatha scream, and then the room is swarmed— faces and limbs blurring together and I’m stumbling upright, realizing too late how this looks: Leon, brutally murdered inside my bedroom, entrails still exhaling from his body as blood stains the carpet beneath us. I stand over him, my face wiped of emotion—me, his murderer, the person who’s already tried to kill him once. Jaws are slack with horror, eyes wide and accusing. Even I can understand the ease with which they form their conclusions. Soon, hands are reaching, rushing at me. Crazed expressions, gasps of urgency, someone shouting get the manacles and I remember, with a start, Agatha’s promise to melt my mouth off my face.
I realize then that I have no choice.
I tuck the vial in my pocket and fumble for the butterknife on the floor and Agatha shouts She’s got a weapon! and I dive out of the way of an electric lasso, crashing into the mirror hanging behind the bathroom door. Glass shatters around me and I don’t hesitate: I whip a shard at the woman’s throat—Deepti, her name is Deepti—and listen for impact, then scramble to my feet as she releases a guttural, choking cry. Agatha launches herself at me in a rage and I make use of her momentum, flipping her over my head, dropping to one knee, and burying the knife in her chest.
I feel a buzz of awareness as I yank the dull blade free, the hum of an unexpected quiet falling over the room. I look up, slowly, at the stunned sea of familiar faces, then the blood on my hands, the look of frozen astonishment on Agatha’s face. Jing is crying. Elias has covered his mouth in horror. Aya has wet herself. Ian is sagging against the wall, looking like he might throw up. I’m miles and miles away from my mind when James finally bursts into the room, and the look on his face as he takes it all in—when he turns and stares at me with a wordless, shattering, breathtaking disappointment—
It actually kills me.
I feel it: my extremities go numb; my heart slows inside my body. My bones give out and I slump to the ground, my head hitting the wet carpet. I stare up at the recessed lights as they dim and flare, pushing everything out of focus. I turn my neck and the effort is exhausting; I blink and it lasts a century. Hands handle me roughly, strip the butterknife out of my fist. I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to kill anymore. I don’t want to be this person anymore. I don’t want to live in this body anymore—
You’ve been dead inside for years, I remind myself.
Die, I tell myself.
Die.
My eyes roll back inside my head, my heart turns to stone in my chest. I feel my mind disconnecting. My chest stops moving. I’m aware, somehow, that I’m no longer breathing, no longer feeling. My skin is a rubber suit, sloshing with liquid.
Die, Rosabelle, I tell myself.
Die.
And this time, I do.
ROSABELLE
CHAPTER 36
In my dreams, everything is soft.
The harsh edges of the world are blunted, my face cradled by clouds. My body seems suspended in water, my hair freed from its utilitarian knot, silky lengths cascading down my back. I am a body still becoming, untouched by tragedy. In my dreams I am safe; I have a strong hand to hold; a door to lock against the dark; a trusted ear into which I whisper my fears. In my dreams I am patient and kind; I have room in my heart for more pain than my own. I am not afraid to smile at strangers. I have never witnessed death. In my dreams sunlight glazes my skin; gentle wind caresses my limbs; Clara’s laughter makes me smile.
She is running.
In my dreams, she’s always running.
My heart restarts with an electric jolt.
“Then try it again,” barks Soledad, his voice booming inside of me. “What do you mean there’s no brain activity?”
“Sir, we’ve tried to implant the chip several times now, but we can’t get her to connect—”
“That’s bullshit,” he cries. “Try it again.”
Alarms blare, hands handling me, stripping me. Cold metal and flashes of light.
“We did it exactly as you asked,” says someone nervously. “We tried it again—this year without any anesthetic, just as you instructed—”
“Then why isn’t she moving?” he says. “Shouldn’t she be screaming?”
“Yes, sir. That would be the normal reaction, sir. Yes.”
“What the hell is wrong with her? Is it possible she still has a mutative gene interfering with the process?”
“It’s hard to know. We’ve administered the gene-editing therapy several times now; at this point she should have no residual mutations, had there been any to begin with.”
“This is unbelievable. Billions spent on research, and you can’t give me a solid reason why there’s one person on this island who can’t be brought online?”
Cool water, warm water, more hands on my body.
“It’s been two years of trying,” says Sebastian. “She’s had plenty of time to recover between attempts. I’m sorry, sir—she promised me it would work this time. She promised me it wouldn’t happen again—”
“I’m sick of this,” Soledad says angrily. “It’s been years of bullshit excuses. I want a real explanation—”
“Her body is exhibiting some kind of resistance,” says a voice I don’t recognize. “We’ve tried it a number of different ways now. No matter what we do, by the time we get everything online it just stops working. The tech is being rejected.”
“That’s impossible,” he says. “The program is flawless. It’s been tested in a thousand ways—”
“We don’t know why it’s happening,” says the voice, terrified now. “In order to bring her online, the mind has to be active. For some reason, we can’t get a signal.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Soledad demands. “Her brain just isn’t working?”
“Yes, sir. Her brain waves are nonresponsive.”
“How?” I hear the moment his anger becomes suspicion. I hear it from lifetimes away, as if I’m suspended from the sun. “You’re saying her body assumes a vegetative state at will?”
“Yes, sir. As far as the program is concerned, she appears to be dead inside.”
It occurs to me that I am naked.
My flesh is pressed against cold metal, a coarse sheet pulled up to my neck. My nerves awaken, like antennae unfurling. My skin seems to soften, my bones to harden. Sound returns to me slowly and scattered: the buzz of electricity, the drag of a footstep, the jangle and clatter of steel, the scrape of tools, sharpening.
Then his voice: a miracle.
“I can’t believe she’s really dead. This is crazy. Are you sure there was no heartbeat? Shouldn’t we be absolutely sure before we do this? Because there’s no logical reason why she should be dead right now—”
A woman says, “She suffered a bad blow to the head at some point in the night. Sometimes the symptoms of a brain hemorrhage are hard to spot.”
I’m on a gurney, I realize, wheeling through space. I feel every bump and rattle of the wheels, the cold bite of metal against my skin. Footsteps pound the floor around me, pound in my head. My heart is beating so slowly it seems to drag. I feel ancient, held together by cobwebs.
“Wait,” James is saying. “Hey— Wait— Can you just hang on for a second—”
The gurney comes to a sudden, violent halt. My body sloshes. My teeth rattle.
“Let it go, James,” says a cold male voice I’ve never heard before. “I want the autopsy performed without delay.”
Autopsy.
I must be in the morgue.
“You’re just going to cut her open?” James is saying. “You’re not even going to try—”
“Look,” the woman says, her voice brisk. “There’s nothing we can do to help her. She’s already dead. We’re thinking she died at least thirty minutes ago. No amount of healing is going to bring her back to—”
My eyes open slowly, the effort like prizing an orange peel from its flesh. My fingers curl by micrometers under the starchy sheet, my lungs expanding a degree at a time.
“Fucking zombie,” someone screams.
My eyes tear as light and color flood my vision. I blink several times before my sight settles, images layering and focusing. A man with jet-black eyes and matching hair is looking down at me, gaping.
“Oh my God,” he says, clasping his chest. “She just gave me a heart attack. Oh my God, I can’t breathe—”
Standing beside him is James. Twice.
Two Jameses.
I blink and the images do not reconcile; instead, they sharpen, the differences between them becoming clearer. Different hair, different eyes. One James is older than the other James: his face sharper, harder, fewer laugh lines around his eyes. Same nose, same jawline, no freckles.
I prefer the freckles.
I like the touch of sun on his skin, the way his mouth animates easily, as if he’s always hoping to smile.
Except now.
Right now, neither James looks pleased to see me. In fact, they wear similar expressions of fury. And then, of course, as my mind sorts itself out, it becomes obvious to me that the second James, the one with golden hair and green eyes, isn’t James at all.
This, I realize, must be the older brother.
Aaron Warner Anderson.
Even now, with my senses on simmer, a flash of trepidation moves through me. The stories about the eldest Anderson brother are legendary, even on the Ark.
“Rosabelle?” James says cautiously. “Can you hear me?”
I try to open my mouth, but the effort to unseal my lips is too much. I’ve been dead, I think, for too long.
“I don’t understand,” says the woman just out of my sightline. She sounds breathless with fear. “She had no pulse. There was no heartbeat, no brain activity—”
“I think we should stick her in the fridge,” says the man with the black hair. He has an impish look, somehow charming even as he insults me. “Give her some time to finish dying off.”
James frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“This is probably some kind of glitch, right?” he explains. “This is like when a worm keeps worming even when it’s split in half.”
“Kenji—”
I make a note: the black-haired man is named Kenji.
“What?” he says, gesturing to me. “Look at her. She’s barely even moving. This is, like, actual zombie behavior. I vote we put a bullet through her head just to be safe.”
James, I notice, doesn’t dismiss this suggestion; he only looks resigned. It occurs to me then that I’ve lost even the idea of him. James will never again be a place of rest for me. His eyes will never again warm in my direction.
He sees me now for what I really am.
Your father was weak. Your mother was weak. Your sister was weak.
You’re a disgrace.
The pain of this realization is so acute it draws a tortured sound from my throat.
“Oh, shit,” says Kenji. “I think she’s trying to say something—”
The burst of battered emotion has a counterintuitive effect, the flood of cortisol and epinephrine restarting my body, propelling my heart and lungs, flooding oxygen to my brain.
“Never mind,” Kenji says, waving a hand. “False alarm.”
I manage to lift my head slightly, and three things catch my eye in quick succession: the lab coat hanging from the wall, the vial of earth sitting on a steel counter, and the exit to my right. I settle back down, my mind spinning out scenarios, preparing for eventualities. I make a mental list of the kinds of tools I might find in a morgue, things that might double as weapons: bone saw; chisel; hammer; brain knife; rib shears—
If I’m going to do this, I’ll only have one chance.
“Soooo, what’s the plan?” asks Kenji. “Are we going to just stand here and stare at her? Because I don’t—”
Warner holds up a hand, and the room falls silent.
He inspects me with a lethal calm that sends a pulse of renewed fear through my body. I blink coolly, keeping my face impassive, but he’s looking straight into my eyes when he says, “Lock down the building, she’s going to run—”
ROSABELLE
CHAPTER 37
I pull the sheet with me as I roll off the table and into a tumble, tripping only slightly as I rip the coat off its hook, whipping it around my body before swiping the vial from the counter, dropping it in my pocket. Warner and Kenji pull guns on me immediately, and I dive out of the way, shots ringing off steel surfaces. Chaos explodes: someone pulls an alarm, an automated voice screeching a security alert through speakers, James shouting my name. The unidentified woman screams, then drops to the floor, body crawling toward the exit. Kenji shouts angrily at James to get Warner out of the room, and I manage to duck behind a counter to catch my breath, buttoning my open coat as I strain to hear Warner’s response, but his quiet words are buried in the blare of sirens. Whatever he says only makes Kenji angrier.
“If anyone is going to die tonight, it’s not going to be you,” he’s shouting. “That kid is not going to grow up without a father. James, I swear to God, if you don’t get him out of here I will shoot you in the face myself—”
I dart past a supply cart, swiping an armful of tools as another gunshot whizzes past my head. The door swings open before slamming shut, and suddenly it’s me and Kenji, and my heart is beating in my throat. I have no idea what I’m up against. He, like the other rebels, might have some unstoppable preternatural power.
Still, somehow, my hands are calm.
“The building is shut down, Rosabelle,” says Kenji casually.
I hear his footsteps, circling.
“Why don’t you come out with your hands up so I can get a straight shot at your heart? Make sure you stay dead this time.”
I dive behind another counter, throwing a brain knife at Kenji before launching myself behind a nearby cabinet. I hear his explosive, muttered curse when the knife makes contact, but there’s no time to experience relief.
My small victory only infuriates him.
He shoots at me more aggressively, the ricocheting sounds of metal all but shattering my eardrums as I run, barefoot, whipping a chisel at his chest as I go. He grabs a steel tray at the last second, using it as a shield to deflect the blow, and the ringing reverberation hasn’t even stopped before he’s unloading rounds at my head again. I duck, forced to take cover farther from the exit. Even with his injury Kenji is blocking the door with his body, refusing to give up his position.
I dart out from behind the cabinet, throwing the hammer as hard as I can, but this time—I don’t see him. In the seconds the hammer hurtles toward the empty doorway, time seems to expand and slow down. I scan the area as if in slow motion, and when I can’t catch a glimpse of him, I decide to make a run for the exit—but he suddenly materializes, like magic, whipping the tray in his hands like a baseball bat. Steel connects with steel, the deafening sound ringing in my teeth. The hammer launches back in my direction and it hits me in the ribs so hard I see sparks, the pain forcing me to cry out.
Grasping my side, I dive for cover.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he says. Then: “What’s in the vial, Rosabelle?”
My breaths are coming in harsher, the agony in my abdomen blooming. Kenji, apparently, can disappear.
