I’m still gasping for air, my head spinning. The pain in my leg is searing, clouding my mind.
“You didn’t think she was that stupid, did you? Evie Sommers?” Anderson almost laughs. “Evie Sommers hasn’t been stupid a day in her life. Even on the day she died, she died with a plan in place to save The Reestablishment, because she’d dedicated her life to this cause. This was it,” he says, prodding at my wound. “You.
“You and your sister. You were her life’s work, and she wasn’t about to let it all go up in flames without a fight.”
I don’t understand, I try to say.
“I know you don’t understand,” he says. “Of course you don’t understand. You never did inherit your mother’s genius, did you? You never had her mind. No, you were only ever meant to be a tool, from the very beginning. So here’s everything you need to understand: you now belong to me.”
“No,” I gasp. I struggle, uselessly, against the restraints. “No—”
I feel the sting and the fire at the same time. Anderson has stuck me with something, something that blazes through me with a pain so excruciating my heart hardly remembers to beat. My skin breaks out in an all-consuming sweat. My hair begins to stick to my face. I feel at once paralyzed and as if I’m falling, free-falling, sinking into the coldest depths of hell.
Emmaline, I cry.
My eyelids flutter. I see Anderson, flashes of Anderson, his eyes dark and troubled. He looks at me like he’s finally got me exactly where he wants me, where he’s always wanted me, and I understand then, without understanding why, exactly, that he’s excited. I sense his happiness. I don’t know how I know. I can just tell from the way he stands, the way he stares. He’s feeling joyous.
It terrifies me.
My body makes another effort to move but the action is futile. There’s no point in moving, no point in struggle.
This is over, something tells me.
I have lost.
I’ve lost the battle and the war. I’ve lost the boy. I’ve lost my friends. I’ve lost my will to live, the voice says to me.
And then I understand: Anderson is in my head.
My eyes are not open. My eyes might never again open. Wherever I am is not in my control. I belong to Anderson now. I belong to The Reestablishment, where I’ve always belonged, where you’ve always belonged, he says to me, where you will remain forever. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very, very long time, he says to me, and now, finally, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Nothing.
Even then, I don’t understand. Not right away. I don’t understand even as I hear the machines roar to life. I don’t understand even as I see the flash of light behind my eyelids. I hear my own breath, loud and strange and reverberating in my skull. I can feel my hands shaking. I can feel the metal sinking into the soft flesh of my body. I am here, strapped into steel against my will and there is no one to save me.
Emmaline, I cry.
A whisper of heat moves through me in response, a whisper so subtle, so quickly extinguished, I fear I might’ve imagined it.
Emmaline is nearly dead, Anderson says. Once her body is removed from the tank, you will take her place. Until then, this is where you’ll live. Until then, this is where you’ll exist. This is all you were ever meant for, he says to me.
This is all you will ever be.
KENJI
No one comes to the funeral.
It took two days to bury all the bodies. Castle tired his mind nearly to sickness digging up so much dirt. The rest of us used shovels. But there weren’t many of us to do the work then, and there aren’t enough of us to attend a funeral now.
Still, I sit here at dawn, perched atop a boulder, sitting high above the valley where we buried our friends. Teammates. My left arm is in a sling, my head hurts like a bitch, my heart is permanently broken.
I’m okay, otherwise.
Alia comes up behind me, so quiet I hardly even notice her. I hardly ever notice her. But there are too few bodies for her to hide behind now. I scoot over on the rock and she settles down beside me, the two of us staring out at the sea of graves below. She’s holding two dandelions. Offers one to me. I take it.
Together, we drop the flowers, watching them as they float gently into the chasm. Alia sighs.
“You okay?” I ask her.
“No.”
“Yeah.” I nod.
Seconds pass. A gentle breeze pushes the hair out of my face. I stare directly into the newborn sun, daring it to burn my eyes out.
“Kenji?”
“Yeah?”