Someone says something back to him, and I don’t catch it. I reach out suddenly with my good hand, clamping down on Winston’s forearm.
“Don’t let them get J,” I try to say. “Don’t let—”
ELLA
JULIETTE
When I open my eyes, I feel steel.
Strapped and molded across my body, thick, silver stripes pressed against my pale skin. I’m in a cage the exact size and shape of my silhouette. I can’t move. Can hardly part my lips or bat an eyelash; I only know what I look like because I can see my reflection in the stainless steel of the ceiling.
Anderson is here.
I see him right away, standing in a corner of the room, staring at the wall like he’s both pleased and angry, a strange sneer plastered to his face. There’s a woman here, too, someone I’ve never seen before. Blond, very blond. Tall and freckled and willowy. She reminds me of someone I’ve seen before, someone I can’t presently remember.
And then, suddenly—
My mind catches up to me with a ferociousness that’s nearly paralyzing. James and Adam, kidnapped by Anderson. Kenji, falling ill. New memories from my own life, continuing to assault my mind and taking with them, bits and pieces of me.
And then, Emmaline.
Emmaline, stealing into my consciousness. Emmaline, her presence so overwhelming I was forced into near oblivion, coaxed to sleep. I remember waking, eventually, but my recollection of that moment is vague. I remember confusion, mostly. Distorted reels.
I take a moment to check in with myself. My limbs. My heart. My mind. Intact?
I don’t know.
Despite a bit of disorientation, I feel almost fully myself. I can still sense pockets of darkness in my memories, but I feel like I’ve finally broken the surface of my own consciousness. And it’s only then that I realize I no longer feel even a whisper of Emmaline.
Quickly, I close my eyes again. I feel around for my sister in my head, seeking her out with a desperate panic that surprises me.
Emmaline? Are you still here?
In response, a gentle warmth rushes through me. A single, soft shudder of life. She must be close to the end, I realize.
Nearly gone.
Pain shoots through my heart.
My love for Emmaline is at once new and ancient, so complicated I don’t even know how to properly articulate my feelings about it. I only know that I have nothing but compassion for her. For her pain, her sacrifices, her broken spirit, her longing for all that her life could’ve been. I feel no anger or resentment toward her for infiltrating my mind, for violently disrupting my world to make room for herself in my skin. Somehow I understand that the brutality of her act was nothing more than a desperate plea for companionship in the last days of her life.
She wants to die knowing she was loved.
And I, I love her.
I was able to see, when our minds were fused, that Emmaline had found a way to split her consciousness, leaving a necessary bit of it behind to play her role in Oceania. The small part of her that broke off to find me—that was the small part of her that still felt human, that felt the world acutely. And now, it seems, that human piece of her is beginning to fade away.
The callused fingers of grief curve around my throat.
My thoughts are interrupted by the sharp staccato of heels against stone. Someone is moving toward me. I’m careful not to flinch.
“She should’ve been awake by now,” the female voice says. “This is odd.”
“Perhaps the sedative you gave her was stronger than you thought.” Anderson.
“I’m going to assume your head is still full of morphine, Paris, which is the only reason I’m going to overlook that statement.”
Anderson sighs. Stiffly, he says: “I’m sure she’ll be awake any minute now.”
Fear trips the alarms in my head.
What’s happening? I ask Emmaline. Where are we?
The dregs of a gentle warmth become a searing heat that blazes up my arms. Goose bumps rise along my skin.
Emmaline is afraid.
Show me where we are, I say.
It takes longer than I’m used to, but very slowly Emmaline fills my head with images of my room, of steel walls and glittering glass, long tables laid out with all manner of tools and blades, surgical equipment. Microscopes as tall as the wall. Geometric patterns in the ceiling glow with warm, bright light. And then there’s me.
I am mummified in metal.
I’m lying supine on a gleaming table, thick horizontal stripes holding me in place. I am naked but for the carefully placed restraints keeping me from full exposure.
Realization dawns with painful speed.