Control (29 page)

DYL MUST BE SOMEWHERE IN THIS ROOM,
or close to it. I smelled the scent before I saw Tegg. But now the freesia is fainter. Even the other barrage of odors is less chaotic. Which means I’m getting better at processing them (doubtful) or Marka’s pills are already wearing off (likely).

Maybe the bio-accelerant is shortening the length of the treatments I’ve been using—a downside I didn’t anticipate. I can’t actually feel it in me. There’s no magic tingle or garish color change to tell me it’s working, only the effects. But if it’s still working, then my immunity to the Alucinari Rooms won’t last much longer.

I lift my arms and survey my green spots. Yes, they’re fading, ever so slightly. I need all the help I can get, so I kick off my shoes and peel away my black leggings. Now I’m perfectly dressed for a nightmare—bra, short elastiskirt, green spots, crazy hair, covered in sweat and grime.

I find Caliga’s knife and tuck it in my waistband, then follow Dyl’s scent into the corner. A dark, very dead-end corner. I sniff up and down the angle where the two walls meet each other, and touch the walls delicately, searching for a seam or anything that could be a door, or an F-TID panel. I no longer have Ren’s stump of a finger. It was discarded in the transport, purple and useless. But I do have Tegg.

“Okay, mister. Need to borrow you for a sec.” I grab Tegg’s wrist, rough and thick with armor. With a few mighty heaves, I slide him over.

Some people enter the room, but leave since the drug clouds are gone. They couldn’t care less about us. Around here, there’s nothing odd about a half-naked, half-green girl lugging around her drugged boyfriend.

I heave Tegg’s hand up with a mighty
“Oof!”
and slap it sloppily against the wall. Nothing. I try over and over. Maybe there’s a finger pad higher up that I can’t reach. Maybe there is no pad. Maybe I’m just failing, as badly as I’d feared.

Finally, my fatigued, jittery hands let go. Tegg’s body slides an inevitable course down to the floor, where he flops over, his hand smacking a dull floor tile in the corner.

Slowly, the floor hollows out beneath Tegg’s head and shoulders. The F-TID touch panel was on the floor the whole time, right under Tegg’s limp hand. His lax body tumbles down a spiral staircase opening below and a waft of air puffs up from the hidden chamber. The faded but distinct scent of freesia hits me square in the face.

My heart. It’s a little lighter just smelling that flower. I take the spiral stairs running, trying not to slip. Tegg’s drugged body, complete with lolling eyes, drapes over the lowest steps.

Above me, the floor of the Alucinari Room closes shut. It’s very dim, and I can’t see much of anything. The faint glint of metal on the ceiling highlights vicious meat hooks hanging from the ceiling in an endless line. A blur of movement comes from the corner.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Dyl? Oh my god!” I run to her, and Dyl hugs me so hard that I feel it in my marrow. We’re both crying our eyes out, soaking ourselves in salt water. My hand rubs her back and the other arm clutches her head close to my chest.

“It’s going to be okay,” I croon. Her hair is stringy and her eyes are shadowed from illness or sleeplessness. Probably both.

“I missed you so much, Zel.” Her hands claw at my shoulders, as if I’m an apparition about to slip away. “But why are you here? Micah said he’d keep you safe. He said he’d take me to you soon.”

“Micah.” Saying his very name feels like a curse. Where do I start? Everything I have to say is going to hurt. “Micah isn’t going to get you out of here—I am.” I sound more confident than I feel. All my Carus tricks are nearly spent. Marka’s trait is getting weaker already. Even with Dyl right here, I smell the freesia but I don’t understand the other ailments attacking her body. Starvation? Vitamin deficiencies?

“No.” Micah’s voice arrives before he does. A small dark spot by the door expands irregularly until it’s big enough for a person to step through. He enters, hands in pockets, as if this is nothing more than a boring social visit. The Micah-shaped hole closes again for a few seconds before it expands, and the shadow-girl in black—Blink—emerges.

“Micah,” Dyl says with precious brightness. I’m nauseated. She still feels something for this piece of roach excrement.

“Yes, love. Isn’t it wonderful. We brought your sister.” His words are sweet, but the tone is deflated and apathetic. He’s only playing the part of the concerned boyfriend.

“Look at her.” Dyl scans me from head to toe. She lifts a shaking hand. “You said she wouldn’t get hurt.”

“Well, that’s mostly her own doing, not mine.”

The shadow girl crosses her arms. “Please. Let’s do this quickly, Micah.” She has a foreign accent, maybe French. “We don’t want the police coming if there’s more trouble. The club is losing people because of the fight in the Auditory Halx.” The wraparound sunglasses are so granny, I’d laugh if I weren’t so scared. Her skin is dark and satiny, absorbing what little light is in the room.

Micah strides forward to stoop several feet in front of us, and to my disgust, Dyl drags herself away from me into his arms.

“Yes, I guess it’s time. Her trinket’s not going to work out for us anyway.”

A tiny shard forms in a hard, painful center between my lungs and my heart.

Trinket.

Ana.

No.

“Dyl . . . you’re pregnant?” I whisper. The scent. The unidentifiable odor I couldn’t recognize. Still in Micah’s arms, she twists her head back at me and nods.

“Oh, Zelia. It was my choice! Please, please don’t be mad at me.”

“Your choice? YOUR choice?” I walk up to Micah and take the knife from my pocket. “You piece of
shit
! She’s thirteen. She’s just a child! You should have left her alone!”

“Zel, don’t hurt him! Oh, please, don’t, don’t!” Dyl screams, and pushes me away from the person who told us everything would be okay, way back in New Horizons. The liar.

Micah glances at my knife, unconcerned. “Don’t do anything else stupid, Zelia. You’re already on SunAj’s bad side. They’re furious about what you did to Ren and Caliga.”

“Good.”

Blink continues to circle us, the outsider in the soap opera.

I don’t want to have to do this to Dyl, but I have no choice. I need her to know, and I need to hear it myself.

“How many girls are in your collection, Micah? What was I supposed to be, number three? Or number thirty? Is Blink one of them too?”

Blink stops walking, startled.
“Tais-toi!”
she hisses, baring her teeth.

Micah holds a hand up to Blink, turning to me. “I did like you, Zelia. More than some. I’m sorry.”

“Stop lying. You’re not sorry.”

“I am. I would tell you more. I wish it could have been different, but it’s just . . . too complicated.” Micah stops talking abruptly to look over his shoulder, as if he’s being watched. “Okay, Blink. Just make it quick. We’ve got the others upstairs to deal with.”

“Pourquoi pas vous?”
she asks quietly.
“Je ne veux pas le faire.”

“You know why. Remember what SunAj told you last week,” he says.

Blink sighs, the sound of someone rapidly losing an argument. “But we could use the sedative gun.”

“Lesson first, tranquilizer later. These are the orders.” Micah gives her a hard stare, and she shrinks in remorse from her little rebellion. She sighs again.
“Lumières,”
she commands, and immediately the room begins to dim. Dyl reaches her arms out to Micah.

“Micah . . .” she says, but he turns pointedly away.

Darkness swallows the corners of the room, spreading quickly. Blink deftly yanks off her sunglasses, and I’m shocked to see black pupils so large, they nearly take up her entire eye. She reaches into her pocket to pull out a tiny pencil-shaped thing. She’s going to attack us with a chopstick?

Dyl runs toward Micah’s retreating form when Blink shakes the stick. It quadruples in length and thickness. With a lunge and one smooth swing, she gets Dyl’s knee in mid-run.

Dyl flies forward, landing on her side, screaming in pain. Micah’s face attempts to stay impassive, but even he winces at the blow. He backs into a corner, crosses his arms, and watches as the darkness overtakes every space in the room. Micah is now completely invisible to me, as is Dyl. I can’t see my own hand in front of my face.

I go in the direction I last saw Dyl and trip over her shoulder. It’s quiet for one second, two, three. All I can hear is my own breathing. All I can smell is Dyl and her fear.

“Oh, Zel. I thought . . . I was sure he was going to help us,” she whispers.

Before I can respond, the strike comes out of nowhere. It hits my left thigh so hard that I choke on the pain. Before I can catch a breath, another blow comes across the left part of my back.

“Stop it!” Dyl screams. “Stop it, Blink! Please!”

I roll on the floor to put a few feet between us and concentrate on my breathing. Marka’s trait is my only weapon now. I take a huge inhalation through my nose, and let it simmer in my brain, finding what I need to know.

Cinnamon. I smell it. Cinnamon, on oatmeal, with crumbles of brown sugar and a river of thick cream. It must have been delicious. She ate two bowls of it, it seems.

As soon as I’m certain, I lunge. The concentration of her scent tells me she’s six feet away, and I don’t even aim for her face. I aim for her ankles. Her skinny legs are in my hands and I yank them forward. She curses in French, falling backward with a crash of elbows against the floor. It’s still pitch-black, but I can punch a face in the dark when I’m holding down a scrawny neck.

It only takes one good blow to make her go limp with fear. I sit astride her, fist poised for another blow, when the lights come on so brilliantly, my eyes wince in pain.

Blink, cowering under me, shrieks. Her black silk clothes rumple under my body.

“Mes yeux! Mes lunettes!”
The light burns her huge, fragile retinas so badly, I don’t even have to hold her down. She squeezes her eyes painfully, blindly groping the floor in search of her sunglasses. Micah walks over to us, but makes no motion to help her.

“This has to stop. You’re making it worse for both of you,” he says.

I try to dodge his hands, but I’m not fast enough. He puts one hand on my wrist, another around my neck, pulling me off Blink. He doesn’t have to use his electrical trait to keep me tamed.

He doesn’t
have
to. He does anyway, the bastard.

The smell of my own flesh burning is horrific, acrid and disgusting. How ironic that it’s the last new scent I’ll learn. Zelia Benten, being burned alive, one handprint at a time. Marking me in places that only a day ago, Cy had touched. I gasp, wondering what’s become of my necklace. Vaguely, I remember Caliga taking it. It’s too late anyway. The necklace would only prolong the pain.

A gentle hiss issues from high above me.

And then, when I can’t take the searing jolts anymore, they mercifully stop. Something soft, wet, and foamy covers me.

“That was a big, big mistake.” Micah stands over me, covered in white foamy blebs that melt on contact with the warmth of his body. I push myself up and look for Dyl. Her hand is hooked over a red lever on the wall. The fire extinguisher.

I raise my hand to grab his ankle, because I know what’s coming. I get a loose handhold on his calf before he simply walks out of my grip. He heads over to Dyl, and punches her in the abdomen with a sickening thud. Her whole body absorbs the momentum and she flies backward, hitting the wall. She tries to block his next blow, but fails.

Micah prepares one last kick. Before him, my tiny sister lies broken on the floor. Her mouth is an open scream with no sound. She is in too much pain to cry. A dark stain blossoms over the back side of her trailing shirt. I watch it, horrified, unable to move. She’s bleeding.

“Stop.”

Micah holds his arm aloft in the air, startled. I turn around to face the person who’s saved us with a single word.

I don’t understand.

It’s SunAj.

“MICAH, STEP BACK,” SUN SAYS WITH A
disaffected lilt. He waves a gnarled hand, ushering him away from us. Micah obeys reluctantly. Sun leans over his cane, his flannel shirt slightly rumpled. Aj squirms in his cheek, the tiny limbs kicking Sun’s cheek with impatience.

“I cannot see, my dear. Please turn.”

Sun turns his head. Aj sees me on the floor, what used to be a girl. Now I’m blistered, raw, half dressed, and wholly exhausted.

She turns away and her limbs relax, bobbling in the air. This is no longer exciting for her.

“I don’t understand,” Micah says. “I was just . . . You told me . . .”

“There is another player at the table.” He points his cane at me and Dyl. “Come with me.”

I don’t waste a moment. I go to Dyl and I wrap my arms around her, though the pain shoots white hot from my fried, oozing skin. Micah seems afraid to touch us now. As Dyl and I start to walk toward SunAj, Micah tentatively follows us.

SunAj waves his cane. “No, Micah. Just the girls.”

Dyl and I take a final look at Micah. He stands there, unmoving, eyes on us as the distance between us thankfully grows. His expression is carved out and spare, like he’s lost something he knows he can’t get back.

The door closes on him. In the dark passageway, we walk toward a dim light. SunAj shuffles slowly. He has a bum foot and drags it slightly askew as he walks. Argent’s pulsing music throbs around us.

Finally, SunAj pushes open a door to the right. It’s a spacious office, complete with walls of virtual holo file cabinets and a gigantic desk in burnished mahogany. Someone is standing in the corner. He turns to us as we walk through the door.

I must be hallucinating.

It’s Cy, pale-faced and grim. He’s dressed in the usual depressing garb I so adore. I’m sure it’s my tortured mind giving me solace. He can’t possibly be here. It can’t be real.

“Zel.” Cy’s jaw muscles clench and he puts his hands behind his back. From the roping of his forearms, I can tell he’s hiding balled-up fists.

“Have a seat.” Sun waves his hand to all of us. Dyl and I continue to clutch at each other as we sit on a long embroidered bench by a wall. We’re both bleeding onto the fabric. I’m hoping this doesn’t get us in trouble, when Sun lifts his chin and offers, “Tea?”

A small door opens near the desk and a silver tea service slides onto it. He’s got to be kidding. Insanely, an imaginary advertisement for Aureus pops into my head.

Welcome to Aureus, land of illegal freaks. Have some torture and tea while you’re here.

“No? Well, then. Let’s get to it. I don’t like to give out contradictory orders to my people, so this intrusion had best be worth our time.” He gently wiggles Aj’s foot, and she awakens with a yawn.

“Wot? Is it done? Are we all in order now?” Aj croaks in a sleepy voice.

“No, my dear. New negotiations.” He turns so Aj can see Cy. We’re all staring at him now.

Dyl whispers to me, “Who is that?”

“He’s . . . he’s . . .” I can’t finish the sentence.
Boyfriend
is too limited a term for what Cy has become to me.
Water? Oxygen?
That might do.

“From my standpoint,” Sun begins, but he twitches when Aj kicks his chin. “From
our
standpoint, you have little to bargain with. I don’t need her”—he points at Dyl—“and you’ve just walked into my house. Might as well keep you both in cold storage. It would be rather easier for me, anyway.” He sips his tea slowly. “Young people can be so irritatingly dramatic.”

“True,” Cy agrees. “But what would a year’s jump on research cost you? Or earn you, rather?” Cy steps forward and places a tiny black chip on his desk.

“What’s this?” Sun picks it up and hands it to Aj, who studies it with her tiny paddle-like hands.

“I have four working elixirs for skin, bone, muscle, and hair. Complete. In your hands is ninety percent of the protocol to make them.”

“And the other ten percent?”

Cy taps his temple. “Here. It’ll take you at least a year to figure out what parts I left out. With my cooperation, these products would be shelf-ready within weeks.” He lets SunAj chew on that for a while, then continues. “You have what, twelve products on the market?”

Aj coughs, a tiny, wheezy noise. “Yes.” She sounds distinctly miffed that Cy knows this number.

“But none of them save lives, do they? Imagine Aureus in possession of a product that could heal the wounds of countless children, fix broken bones in an afternoon? Among other things, of course.”

Sun narrows his eyes, considering the political leverage of such contributions to society. No wonder they’ve been after Cy for so long. And no wonder he was so afraid of Aureus. He truly is a priceless commodity. Sun’s eyes actually sparkle with interest. “Go on.”

“And to guarantee that Zelia and Dyl are released unharmed—” At this, I gasp. I understand what he’s doing, and I shake my head. Cy silences me with a splayed-out hand behind him. “We can add one more thing.”

Cy approaches one of the holo boards on the wall. He touches it, does a quick search, and brings up Tegg’s product on the market, the one we’ve seen on billboards. SkinGuard. The police forces in several States have reportedly purchased them in bulk.

“How long does it take for SkinGuard to work?” Cy asks.

Sun frowns. “Four weeks to grow full armor, more or less. About as long as it takes for skin to turn over.”

“We can beat that by three weeks, six days.”

“Bio-accelerants are illegal,” Sun says smugly.

“As if illegality has ever stopped you before.”

Aj sighs. “That particular information has never been accessible by us. We’ve tried.”

Cy lowers his eyes to me. I’m either with him, or I’m not. Dyl’s hand is growing colder in mine. I know what I must do for Dyl, but it’s killing me. I can already feel Cy being torn away from me, forever. His eyes beg me wordlessly.

Please.

I finally stand up. “It’s been accessible to me,” I say. “I’ve made it and used it, and it works.”

“Indeed?” Sun’s eyebrow raise. “The way your elixir worked on the pig?”

I step forward, letting go of Dyl’s hand. “Have you seen Ren and Caliga?”

Sun rolls his eyes. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Twenty eyelids! We’ll have to find a black market surgeon for that one,” Aj snaps.

“Well, there’s your proof that the bio-accelerant works. Normally, those changes would have taken weeks. Months, even.”

Sun perks up. “And the formula is . . .”

“At Carus,” I say. “I didn’t bring it with me.”

“And neither did I,” Cy says. “The data files will be delivered after you’ve released Zelia and her sister.”

Dyl listens to all of us, bewildered. She starts shivering, so I sit and wrap my arm around her. The embroidered couch underneath her shows a spreading black patch of blood. I have to get her out of here soon, and yet I’m on the cusp of losing Cy too.

Sun remains quiet for a long time. For a time, his eyes stare at the wall, unfocused. I wonder if he and Aj are having an internal conversation. Finally, the spell is broken when Aj jerks suddenly, and Sun looks up.

“Very well. We accept.” He stands up, leaning heavily on his cane.

Aj murmurs quietly, more to Sun than to us, “Micah did well bringing Dylia to us. We knew it would be fruitful, one way or another.”

I shrink at her words. All this insanity over getting Dyl back was to reel in a larger catch in the end. My eyes go to Cy, whose face is sad but determined.

“Did you know?” I whisper.

“I guessed. It doesn’t matter, though,” he says from across the room.

SunAj heads for the door. “You have five minutes.”

Cy doesn’t wait. He’s by my side in half a second, holding me so tightly, I don’t mind the pain. I kiss him and cling to his shoulders, not wanting to let go. He gently starts to pry me away.

“It’s time to go home. Marka’s waiting outside. It’s all arranged.”

“It’s true? We can leave?” Dyl says, watching us both.

At first I nod, but then I turn back to Cy. “How did Marka let you do this?”

“It’s my choice. I’m eighteen.”

“I never should have left,” I say. “I should have stayed.”

“That wouldn’t have happened. You knew what you had to do. Like I knew this time. Like I knew with Ana, but I was too busy being afraid.” He breaks his eye contact with me to lower his eyes, but the sadness has evaporated. He looks more at peace than I’ve ever seen him. “You’re so brave. You never stopped trying to get your sister, and it took way too long for me to learn the same lesson.”

“Cy, this isn’t about lessons, or bravery, or—”

He shakes his head, not listening. “I’ve been selfish my whole life. In practice, though not in principle. And it’s time for me to even things up.”

“This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen.” I clutch at his hands so hard, I know I’m hurting him. But he doesn’t fight it, just absorbs the energy I throw his way, as if saving it up for later.

“Nothing is. Look at us. We’re not destined for anything remotely normal. But you’re the one who got me to live again. Argent was the first time, and running after you in the junkyards . . . you forced me to go after what I knew what was right. Well . . .” He lifts my raw hand to his face, kissing my bloody knuckles. A tiny drop of red stains his lip. “This is what I want.”

The door opens. The stocky boy enters, carrying pen-sized infusers in his hand. Cy extends his hand.

“Let me, please.” Cy takes one pen and walks to Dyl, crouching by her side. “They don’t want you to be awake when you leave.”

“As long as I wake up anywhere but here,” she says to him, her eyes huge.

“I promise.”

My sister nods, and he pushes the tip of the pen lightly against her arm. A hover chair is pushed in from the corridor and Dyl slumps into it, already drowsy. She’s getting pale, and now the front of her skirt is also dark with blood.

“Your turn.” Cy walks over to me.

I grab his wrist. “Please, wait . . .”

“This is the way it has to be. You’ve got Dyl back. And there’s Ana. You’ve got two sisters who need you now.”

He’s right. My life isn’t mine to toss here and there anymore. For a sliver of a second, my heart softens toward my dad. His life, though filled with deceit and the incessant need to control who I was and what I was to become, was never fully his. The ownership of responsibility for lives beyond his own, how he ran from Aureus with his neck on the line to save us—I almost understand it.

Almost.

But that’s the responsible part of me. The selfish part, which wants to keep Cy permanently glued to my side, isn’t having it.

“Wait—”

Something round and cold pushes against the nape of my neck. At first, I think Cy is pinching me into submission, but I hear the tiniest
pfft
and the drug hits my bloodstream immediately. My legs go wobbly and ignore my internal command to stand up. Cy catches me as my knees buckle, and lays me on the floor.

“I love you, Zel. Even though you drugged me. And lied. And were a general pain in the ass.” He smiles tenderly and reaches for his pocket. It’s my necklace. He drapes it over my neck and my lungs jerk to attention, expanding and shrinking in clock-like tics. The drug pulls my eyelids down and every muscle in my body is a slave to gravity, magnified by ten.

Cy bends down to kiss me. It’s a strange thing to be kissed and not be able to kiss back. I want to scream, to hit him, to make him stay with me. My vision blurs as he hovers over me. He stares for one long moment, emptying his soul into mine, letting me collect what I can.

Cy plucks my lifeless hand off the floor with his warm hand, holding it to his chest. I put all my effort into one last plea. Tears stream out of my eyes and trickle down into my scalp.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“You have the only part of me that’s important,” he whispers. “Keep it safe, Zel.”

Cy’s dark eyes, confident and steady, find mine. My eyelids finally fall, as sure as a dropped stone returns to the earth.